


and then we are beyond the end

by JPlash



Series: Never Regrets 'verse [3]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 79,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JPlash/pseuds/JPlash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beyond a beach where Erik doesn't let go. With Charles subdued by pain it's easy to agree that he's not thinking straight, and Erik is an expert in keeping on when the world falls apart.  In an empty safehouse in Argentina, Erik finds what needs to be done, and does it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Follows 'as if the choice were mine to make' (in which Erik ignores protests and takes Charles with him).

_“I will not fight your war, my friend.”_

 _Erik slid his right arm carefully under Charles’s limp body, down at the knees, moved his left to span Charles’s shoulders instead of just propping his head. He kept his eyes on his hands and not on Charles’s face._

 _Charles tried anyway—Charles always tried. “There is nothing to be gained in—“_

 _Words broken off by a high-pitched gasp, the slightest gurgle to it in the throat, as Erik stood and lifted him in one clean movement. Charles hung doll-like in the crooks of Erik’s elbows, head against Erik’s shoulder, white cheeks flushed red, hands moving erratically, stiffly above laboured breath, eyes rolled back disturbingly and then returning, pupils huge._

 _Erik settled the mostly-dead weight of his only and utterly unwilling friend safely against his chest and nodded once more to Azazel._

 _Raven placed a hand where Erik’s hand rested against Charles’ ribs, and Azazel joined hands simply with Riptide, who connected in turn to Angel, who wrapped her hand probably as tightly as she could manage around Erik’s upper arm, and as Moira stumbled forward, apparently recovering some of her fight at sign of action, a slightly unhinged “He needs a doctor,” and then, eyes wild, “Charles I didn’t know, I—I’ll say nothing, your house—the secret’s safe with—"_

***

It was a dark room, empty prior to their materialisation and thus with lights unlit.

Riptide moved away from them, rectifying that part of the situation. It was somewhere Shaw had spent some time, then, Erik noted, enough that his men knew where the lights were.

“We’ll be safe here.” Charles’s voice was weak, terribly weak, his face still contorted and flushed and looking worse for being streaked with sweat and sand and tears. The hand closest to Erik’s chest was clenched tight in the front of his suit. Besides the way that pulled the collar of the outfit uncomfortably at the back of Erik’s neck, Charles was disturbingly easy to carry—too light and too fragile and too recognisably injured. Erik had pulled the bullet out himself; he knew where it had been, and he knew what that meant for the way Charles’s lower body was deadweight in his arms.

Erik reminded himself that Charles’s mutation was perhaps the most powerful he’d seen and made himself focus on the now. Charles was many things, but not fragile, not in the way that meant vulnerable to death. He nodded once. “The children won’t be if they stay at Westchester, and nor will anyone the humans get to before we do.”

“We are human, my friend.”

Erik looked caught between disgust and fury for no more than half a second. He scanned the room and walked directly to the nearest soft surface, a long and luxurious chair with gilt at its edges and short-pile velvet upholstery. He released Charles to the cushions carefully but wordlessly, eyes on his task and not on the way Charles’s eyes squeezed shut and his teeth bit into his lips as Erik positioned him on his side and the bullet wound pulled.

He left Charles there digging his short nails into the velvet and returned to the others. Charles could not be his top priority. “We need to dispose of those intimate with the CIA project and with this event as quickly as possible. If possible we need also to get back their information on Charles, and any information they have on Shaw’s network. We can only use as much as they don’t know to locate, and I don’t want to have to find somewhere to put those who won’t work with us. If we can take the information from them before they start checking the properties to Charles’s name then we can leave the three boys and any other liabilities we locate at Westchester and avoid giving them any further knowledge of us. Ideally we should also wipe records of other mutants…particularly Sean Cassidy, I don’t need the CIA using family members to blackmail the boys into contacting us. I don’t want our own turned against us. And Raven. Yes, it will be convenient for us if knowledge of her gifts is eliminated to the point that it isn’t taken seriously.”

“And Cerebro,” Raven added. “We let them turn on us once. We shouldn’t let them find others.”

Erik nodded distractedly. “They don’t have a telepath for now but yes, that too.” He turned to Riptide and Azazel, both clearly waiting for instruction—Angel had slunk away to curl in the corner of another couch, palm pressed to the ragged edge of her wing. “Who knows that Shaw was posthuman?”

“It’s not only humans…” Charles croaked from the couch, as though Erik might somehow have overlooked that the man he’d hunted most of his life had turned out to be—one of them. It didn’t matter. He ignored Charles.

“No one living,” Riptide smirked.

“The White Queen,” Azazel added. “Those in this room. The three I took to New York.”

Raven shook her head. “No, the CIA knows—when you attacked us in Virginia, you can’t have killed everyone who saw. And there were cameras everywhere. Besides, Moira knew and I don’t think she’d think that was something she shouldn’t tell them.”

“Then they’ll assume we have access to his properties and his network.” It was inconvenient, but probably inevitable. “Is this—“

“A safehouse,” Azazel confirmed. “Few of his bases are listed.”

Erik considered this carefully before replying. No degree of caution could be too much, not now, on the first unsteady steps of his future. “We should remain based here until we can discover what parts of his network are known to intelligence agencies. They can’t surprise us when we’re already here but they almost certainly know that we have a teleporter. They may lay traps in locations they suspect we may use.”

Raven nodded slowly, her thumbnails pressed into her palms. Her skin looked like armour, and it almost distracted from the way she was just slightly shaking. “I could do it, I think. If we can figure out who’d have access to the information, and if I can see them for a bit…”

“That should be stage two,” Erik confirmed. It was falling into place, slowly, the pieces coming together in his mind. They had few allies for now and thus few gifts but Azazel’s was powerful, and so was Raven’s. Charles’s was invaluable but that would be a careful manoeuvre—Charles had not come with him willingly and he knew with frustrating certainty that if he was not careful with what he asked, his only friend would refuse to aid him at all. For now, action was urgent.

“We need to eliminate as quickly as possible anyone with a strong interest in hunting us down—anyone who might consider disclosing our existence to the population. Six of us will have difficulty preventing a genocide once mobs start rounding up and lynching anyone they suspect. Azazel should bring immediate liabilities here where they can be interrogated and shown to Raven before they die.”

“Erik…” It was almost unbelievable that Charles could layer that level of distress into his voice separate to his wound and his weakness. Erik was fairly certain, however, that he could believe anything of Charles.

Raven glanced over at the couch with clear discomfort. “They want to kill us. Erik’s right. We have to—it’s self-defence.”

If Charles had any reply, he was too slow to speak it.

“Who?” Azazel’s question was perfectly simple, utterly unquestioning of the clear logic, the implicit need for certain men to die and the rightness of it.

It tightened Erik’s chest in the most glorious way, a level of satisfaction that floated on top of his revenge and muted the unavoidable fact of the man lying paralysed— _Charles_ , paralysed—six feet away. He wasn’t sure yet _who_ needed to die but as soon as he was, he had followers willing—waiting—to do it for him.

Gifted followers, mutant, like him.

He turned to Raven with a smile he couldn’t quite quash. “I think Raven will be able to find out for us?”

Raven nodded slowly, carefully, eyes locked on Erik’s with the transparent need to forget what Charles would say. “If Azazel takes me where they were commanding the ships from, I can shift one person to another ‘til I—well I guess they’ll be planning too, won’t they? I just need to find that meeting and then…” she hesitated only a moment, eyes still on Erik’s, golden-bright. “Then Azazel can bring them here.”

“Raven…” Charles again, choked and rasping, clearly too weak to argue but too stubborn to shut up.

Erik held Raven’s gaze. Raven turned once to the couch—Charles was invisible from here anyway, hidden by the back of the seat—and then to the group standing, waiting, Erik and Raven and Riptide and Azazel.

She was still shaking, a little, but her voice was steady.

“My name is Mystique now.” She looked back to Erik with the smallest edge of a smile. “And I work for Magneto.”


	2. Chapter 2

The gilded sitting room felt empty, de-energised once Azazel and Raven—Mystique—were gone; post-battle rather than pre-battle, with Angel and Charles silent and unmoving and nothing useful that Erik could order Riptide to do. His own drive was not enough to overcome that sense of settling, but it was enough to keep _him_ moving. “Where do I find a bedroom?” No doubt that there would be one—the excess of this room made clear they were in a base designed for comfortable living.

Riptide pointed in both directions. “There are beds that way, basic rooms,” off beyond the couches, “his bedroom’s that way,” he indicated the corridor behind him, “and there are a few up above ground.”

Erik asked the obvious question as he rounded the couch where Charles was curled, piteous. “Where are we?”

“Inland from Villa Gesell, Argentina. There’s a small beerhouse up—“

“I know.” Erik cut him off. He didn’t elaborate, or ask whether the man pouring the beer had been in charge of the compound, or whether the position had been re-filled since Erik’s first visit had vacated it. If it had, then the replacement would be easily convinced to join them if mutant, if these few were anything to go by, and easily killed if human.

He crouched down by the seat. “Charles.”

Charles curled very slightly away, into the back of the seat. His voice was breathy, consonants bitten off. “I need a doctor.”

“I know. Soon. I’m going to take you somewhere you can rest.”

“I can’t feel my legs, Erik.”

“I know.” He eschewed further words in favour of sliding his arms slowly, carefully but easily enough under Charles again, lifting him from the couch. Charles tensed immediately, almost a jerk, but it was only half of his body and the deadweight of his legs anchored him in Erik’s hold. “Soon, Charles,” he murmured, not entirely sure himself what he promised, and ignored without a second thought the other two sets of eyes in the room, trained on him in silence.

“Three doors down on the right,” Angel called quietly as he stepped past Riptide into the corridor. Her voice was flat, preoccupied with her own injury, but not hostile. He nodded acknowledgement without turning around and kept walking.

They passed the first grey door in silence, then a long stretch of blank concrete wall. The carpet was thick enough to muffle their footsteps completely and it made the hall eerily unchanging.

“You can’t do this, my friend. Killing will not—“

“I don’t need your permission, Charles.” Erik wasn’t sure why the man had bothered waiting until they were alone, but it hardly mattered.

“And if I can show them that there’s a better way?” The second door on their right, Charles’s voice quiet, strained but certain as ever.

“Then I will prevent you.” It wasn’t a threat, really; just a fact.

Charles didn’t take it as one; he’d never taken Erik as a threat, for reasons utterly incomprehensible to Erik. “My powers are entirely intact, Erik.”

“Of which I am glad. For now, you need to rest.” He didn’t bother shifting Charles’s weight to free his hand—he turned the doorknob without touch, brass, and pushed the door open with his foot.

That it was Shaw’s bedroom was not particularly evident; the luxury told that it belonged to the compound’s owner, but no personal touch betrayed who that had been. Shaw’s personal touches, Erik knew with only slight nausea, were all nuclear rods and instruments of torture; not things that belonged in his own bedroom. The bed appeared freshly made, and that was really all that mattered. Erik lowered his burden slowly on top of the duvet, rolling Charles’ unresisting body once again onto its side. Charles managed marginally more dignity this time, but it really didn’t matter to either of them much. They'd seen each other undignified before and agony didn't expect dignity, regardless.

Erik crossed back to the door and shut it before coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to cut the fabric away from the bullet hole.”

“I need a doctor—”

“And I will have you one, but not yet. I don’t want your suit crusting into the wound.”

Charles bit his lip hard, as though Erik were likely to suddenly attack the injury. Erik did his best to ignore it as he drew the knife sheathed inside the back of his belt.

He touched high on Charles’s back, almost at his nape. Charles tensed compulsively.

“Sorry.”

Erik ignored the apology. “Relax. I’m careful, I promise.”

Charles nodded stiffly, not relaxed at all.

Erik resisted a sigh. Instead he began to move his fingers slowly, precision slowly down the line of Charles’s spine. “Tell me when it hurts a lot more.”

“It all hurts.” There was a valiant attempt at wry humour in his tone, achingly transparent in its failure.

Erik kept going, vertebra by vertebra. Four or five up from the wound—Erik couldn’t count without touching closer—Charles jerked out a shout that cracked from his dry throat and almost made Erik’s steady hand jump with the movement of his back. Erik moved his fingers back up half an inch.

“It—what you said.” The words were panted out. Charles was shaking slightly but steadily.

Nodding though he knew Charles couldn’t see it, and couldn’t hear the affirmation in his mind through the helmet, Erik caught the skintight fabric of the suit between his fingers, just higher than the point where pain escalated, and stretched it carefully away from Charles’s back until he could make a cut.

Charles breathed low and shallow, slightly too fast, but stayed still.

From there it was easy enough—the knife was sharp and the fabric didn’t pull so long as Erik kept a firm grip between the cut and the wound. When the clean tear of the fabric met itself around the circle, a round in the back of Charles's suit almost a foot across, Erik released it carefully and resheathed his knife before going any further.

“Charles?”

Another shallow breath. “Mmnh.”

“I’m going to peel the fabric away now.”

Charles swallowed visibly. “It’s going to hurt, I suppose?”

Erik half smiled despite himself. “You are such a child.”

Charles released a slightly louder breath, pressed his eyes shut, bit his teeth together into the inside of his bottom lip. “Do it.”

The blood was not quite dry, fortunately, or it would no doubt have been a far messier business. The passage of the bullet had charred bits of the odd fabric together with the ragged edges of Charles’s skin around the small hole, and they pulled off with the fabric to reveal raw flesh, slowly seeping fresh blood. Charles cried out at the first parting of flesh, a high-pitched, unanticipated yelp that he quickly clamped down into loud breathing through his nose, lips pressed out of sight between his teeth.

“Half way there,” Erik murmured, checking the minimal amount of flesh the fabric had pulled with it, and then, “Second half now—”

Charles managed to keep his mouth shut this time, a higher-pitched sob that was almost a squeak sounding mutedly in his throat and then just heavy breathing, a circle of pale, bared skin marred by an angry twist of red and darker red with sand still in the centre. The curve of his lower back became the small swell of his narrow hips, the cleft of his arse extending into the bottom half of the circle. It was a long way down his back, the wound, and that was good. He’d lose his legs and almost certainly some other functions, but there was no need to worry about his breathing. That was something, or it would be. Erik was sufficiently self-aware to know that he hadn’t truly absorbed this particular reality as yet, and he was certain Charles hadn’t. He folded the circle of charred blue and yellow fabric and placed it neatly on the bedside table.

He briefly considered trying to clean the wound, but didn’t really know how, not enough to be confident he couldn’t make it worse flushing it with water. It was swelling horribly, grotesquely, but he was equally uncertain about the possible effects of ice. Best just to keep the back relatively straight, for now.

Charles’s eyes were pressed shut, but even from the opposite side of his body Erik could see the droplets wetting his eyelashes, long eyelashes, and tracing down over the bridge of his nose to fall on the mattress.

Erik waited silently, resisting the urge to touch the tears—it would only make Charles try to move when he should be still—or to touch the bared skin, a circle red and puffy at the centre, smoothing out to his almost obnoxiously, beautifully alabaster white. It would be smooth as ever but warmer, he knew, slightly fevered and hot from inflammation where Charles’s skin was normally slightly cool to his touch. The bared skin was a circle of pain, the radius in which touch triggered agony, and Erik left it alone.

He had counted a minute and a half of silence when Charles spoke.

“I can’t move my legs.”

Erik willed himself to calm. “I know.”

“No, I—I can’t move my legs. I can’t feel my legs. The bullet—and now I can’t feel my legs.”

“I know, Charles. I know.”

Charles struggled to turn his head enough to look into his friend’s face without moving his torso, eyes wide and wild, not quite rational, every word forceful as though the problem could be solved if he could only communicate it properly. “I _can’t move my legs_.”

 _Because the bullet severed your spinal cord_ , Erik didn’t say. _Because I let fury get in the way of purpose and deflected it instead of sending it back into her skull_. He did say, “You’ll have the best doctor I can find, Charles, as soon as our people are made safe.”

His hand rested uncomfortably on Charles’s shoulder—it was an awkward position, but he didn’t want to touch Charles's back unnecessarily. With his other hand he gently pressed Charles’s head back down to a more natural position on the pillow, two fingers on his temple like parody, two at his hairline, grainy with sand.

Charles let himself be moved; gazed blearily at the opposite wall.

Erik counted another hundred and two seconds of silence.

“Killing is not the answer, my friend.” His hysteria had faded as quickly as it had come, panic folding to denial. Mania replaced by a thick quiet that felt insulated from reality.

“Rest now, Charles.”

“I cannot let you do this.”

Erik breathed out, not the melodrama of a sigh, as he stood. Charles wasn’t going to let himself drift as long as Erik was here to be argued at. “You cannot stop me, Professor.” He turned toward the door.

The muffled exclamation of pain did not prepare him for the weak grasping, a brush of fingers at his wrist as he stepped away. When he turned back Charles was twisted in a way that made horribly evident the loss of his lower half, legs still facing the other wall, back what must have been painfully close to contact with the blankets, the lines of his face limned with pain, arm outstretched. Erik stood wordless, Charles’s fingers wrapped loosely around his left wrist.

“There is so much good in you, my friend.” A rasping breath. “It’s what makes you want to protect. I have seen it myself.” The effort it cost Charles to speak the words was painfully evident, his chest heaving, his teeth gritted against pain. It was nothing new, and Erik had nothing new to say to it.

Charles tugged weakly on the arm in his grip then closed his eyes as Erik took the half step back to the side of the bed. His eyes remained shut as he drew Erik’s hand to his face and pressed his reddened lips softly to the inside of Erik’s knuckles, third finger, then, as Erik conceded his hand, to his palm—the edge of Charles’s hairline beneath Erik’s fingers, the fragile juncture of Charles’s ear; Erik’s thumb pressed lightly between blue, blue eyes shut away—and then his wrist, a slightly greater pressure, lingering a second, two seconds, three before he drew away. Erik traced the line of his friend’s lips with his thumb, the line of his jaw with his fingers, before drawing back his hand.

“I have not given up on you,” Charles murmured, eyes lidded, unable to twist himself back to look in Erik’s direction again now that the strain on his back had been released.

Erik swallowed once, reminded himself of his purpose, and let the certainty of that calm his mind, steady his heart. “Good,” he answered, no more than what it meant, and stepped away again, backward. “I’ll be back later. Get some rest.”

Charles might have nodded weakly, but Erik was already shutting the door behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

It was two hours before Azazel returned, Mystique on one arm and a bewildered looking, grey-haired man in a suit on the other.

Erik had the man’s hands behind his back, metal buttons on his jacket cuffs and feet anchored together by the metal in the heels of his boots before he got as far as—“Oh Holy God—” and by the time he ripped the buttons from his sleeves with pulling, voice a harsh, rough terror of—“It’s you—it’s— _the mutants_ —” Erik had managed the more conventional control route of a gun directed at the man’s head. Riptide had retrieved in the past hours a rather extraordinary cache of small arms from somewhere up the north corridor.

Then there was another man by the first, a burst of black smoke and Azazel was gone again and then a moment later, much quicker this time, another. Mystique disappeared down a hall with a call of—“I’ll find more metal!” Erik scanned the room for immediate options and sighted the small stack of guns on the table and the trolley cart of weaponry in the corner. Well.

He summoned Charles’s voice in the back of his mind, serenity, serenity—not just the rage that these men would kill every one of them and every one like them if given a chance, slaughter every scared child trying to hide truths from parents or already abandoned, scavenging for food—but the serenity of having them here, of having them in his power, of being certain that not one of these men would ever hurt a mutant because not one of these men would leave here alive. The weapons floated from the table not as a mass but as fifty-six independent objects, a level of complex, diversified control different to but almost as taxing as lifting the sub. They pointed themselves in a hovering, unsteady circle at the men appearing one by one or sometimes two in a small, rhythmically growing clump and Erik focused his mind, rage and serenity and the memory of the calm of Charles’s intangible touch on his consciousness, and readied each individual trigger to spring.

The men were shouting, screaming now as they appeared, still in motion from what must have been a run for the door where they’d come from, coming up short as the physical disorientation of a first teleport made them stumble and the barrel of a gun brought them up short. It was almost at a distance, the sound of them—it took so much focus to control each weapon, to point each one, to hold each trigger—and through that screen the clamour was like sustenance, an escalating source of calm, certainty—the deep breath of air after drowning that this time, he was the one in control.

Riptide took a step forward into the edge of Erik’s peripheral vision. “Your telepath’s projecting—”

“He’s in my head!”

A series of incoherent shouts: horror, fear.

“Get out!”

“Don’t try to—”

“I’m not going to—”

“Freak!”

Erik took a deep breath. “Silence!”

His deep voice cut under and rang over the mess of tight-throated cowards before him. Each of the guns cocked, a tiny click, a small movement, and the riot of fear and disgust and hatred abruptly stopped.

Several of the men were shaking—several more were openly in tears.

Erik raised an eyebrow at Riptide. Riptide shrugged. “He was projecting—” another shrug of one shoulder. “Distress. The emotion. Not one for fighting, is he?”

Erik didn’t feel the need to give that a reply.

“Don’t know what he said to them, though. That was after.”

“Make it stop.” The speaker was near the front of the now largish group, skinny frame tense, eyes wide in a wrinkled face. “We’ll be quiet. We’ll tell you whatever you want to know. We’ll—we can negotiate. There’s plenty of power in this room to negotiate. Just—” he glanced around at the guns, then clearly decided his priorities were elsewhere, finishing—“Just have the telepath stop.”

The man was vaguely familiar—not a man who’d been at the Virginia facility but one they had met with at least once with Erik present—the CIA woman’s superior, Erik thought. That might have been interesting had not there been a more immediate source of rather greater fascination; Charles was doing something.

Erik did his best to make the question sound rhetorical, confident. “Why? What’s he saying to you?” He put teeth in his voice, the catch of a threat, the slightest lift of the corner of his lips that suggested he knew already. If these men thought that he was directing Charles, all the better.

The man raised both his hands placatingly, palms outward. “I know that he can do more than speak to us. There’s no need for that. We’re happy to negotiate. We’ll all be much more willing to do so generously if our minds aren’t tampered with. Forcing congeniality on us will only damage our relationship in the long run.”

Forcing congeniality? Erik barked out a laugh, then allowed himself the edge of a smile. He scanned the group with a level gaze. “Leave them alone, Charles.” He didn’t bother raising his voice—Charles was almost certainly behind the eyes of one of them. No doubt he was trying to quiet them, to calm them—possibly he thought he would make Erik better disposed toward them, but Erik suspected that Charles knew him better than that.

More likely it was just Charles being Charles—calming people was something he did almost without thinking. It drove Erik slightly mad even as he couldn’t help revelling in the peace that softened the edge of his thoughts with Charles, peace that had been so elusive as to be forgotten since before Shaw, before the coin, before his mother.

Raven—Mystique, he must remember to call her that, it would be a good constant reminder of their new direction, that they were more now than they had been before—reentered the room at a stumbling run, a length of chain weighing heavily in her arms.

Erik offered her a genuine smile, or the most genuine that he had. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Thank you, though, for the thought.”

She was goggling at the ring of guns, easier to control by the minute. It was a different sort of control to what he had spent most of his time training for, but he was getting the hang of it.

“Thank you.” The thin CIA man again.

Erik raised an eyebrow, dropping the smile. “I didn’t ask you to speak. Don’t make me change my mind.” He glanced again at Riptide. “Confine them. Securely.”

The man’s smile curved smoothly, feline in its satisfaction. “Certainly.” He turned to the couches, where Angel had not paused in repainting her fingernails. “Angel.”

There was fear in her eyes, though, when she looked up—Erik wasn’t certain what of.

“Come be sure the front of the group behave for me?”

The fear retreated a little at Riptide’s request, not gentle but smooth and low and simple enough, and she recapped her varnish before standing. The way that several men’s eyes moved from the guns to focus utterly on the young woman was almost more of a statement about their intelligence than the decision to fire metal missiles at a man who controlled metal had been.

Angel’s eyes scanned the clustered men, mouth twisting a little in disgust. Then she spat, once, and several men jumped as a burning clump of acid waste landed wetly an inch from a well-shined leather shoe and sat there, eating through the carpet.

“North corridor,” Riptide added as she strutted toward her projectile, fear still evident in the overcompensating attempt at confidence, and then one man let out a sudden shout as Riptide twisted his fingers in the air, pulled his hands apart, summoned a whirling mass of gale-force air and bony shards to spin before him.

“Move,” he suggested as those closest shrank away from him, breathing hard.

And so he herded the quaking knot of political and military heavyweights toward and then down the north corridor, a second and then a third whirlwind joining the first to keep the back of the group moving, Angel strolling backward in front looking very much like she hoped they’d give her a chance to punish them.

Mystique stood by the nearest seat, chains draped over one corner.

“Where’s Azazel?”

Her eyes kept flicking to the corridor, uncomfortable, but she answered steadily. “I asked him to put the room back in order once he’d brought them all. If it looks like they all just disappeared or walked out or something…I thought it might be better than being obvious that we abducted them.”

Erik was momentarily amused by the thought of Azazel turning chairs back on their feet, gathering papers into neat piles, but it was a sound strategy despite the way it smacked of cowardice—he wasn’t bothered by cowardice. It would have been preferable to storm the place and demonstrate the consequences for those who’d crossed him but he didn’t have an army, and he didn’t have the means to protect the mutant population still living among their lesser men if he prematurely triggered an attempt at genocide.

Removing these men who were already set to slaughter should remove that danger for now—if there was no real evidence of abduction then it would take all the longer for sufficient violent will to gather again. The existence of mutants—and thus of Azazel’s teleportation—was still enough of a secret that few would believe a room full of men could really have been abducted in such a way.

He nodded to Mystique, summoning the smile again. “Well done. Do you believe that this is all of them?”

“This was the meeting where they were—deciding what to do with us.” The words were hard for her, her voice was transparent in that, but Erik didn’t call her on it. She _had_ effectively been raised by Charles. “All the staff from Hank’s centre were killed by Shaw, so I think only the higher ups would know about us—and I think this is all of them. I think they’d all be at the meeting. They were talking to the Russians, though, on the telephone, so—” Erik could see her bracing herself, daring herself to take the step—“I think Azazel and I should go to Russia as well, bring them here too.”

Erik nodded. It was a step that would have horrified Charles and his sensibilities. “Thank you, Mystique.”

She smiled awkwardly, a brief turn of her lips but his praise pleased her, he could tell. “The only thing…”

“Yes?”

“The first time Charles and I went to the CIA, there were five—one died at the same time as Darwin, and two are here, and one was Moira, but then there was Moira’s partner—I don’t know where he is.” Her fingers traced absently over the links of chain—Erik wondered whether a more compact, lighter length might be a useful thing to carry with him, usable as both weapon and tool now that he had more control.

He considered the information. “A relatively powerless man?”

Raven frowned. “I think so. Moira couldn’t stop them attacking us on the beach, so I don’t think—I think it’s okay anyway, Er—Magneto.” She smiled, sheepish, then sobered again. “He was—not as enthusiastic about us as Moira but he was friendly, and I think he’d listen to her. She wouldn’t let him make trouble for us.”

Erik wasn’t at all certain about that, but he let it rest for now. Better sending them to Russia for the other half of the problem than having them creep around every CIA facility on the east coast searching for one underling. “Fine,” he confirmed belatedly. “When Azazel returns, are you ready to do Russia?”

He resisted the urge to just order it—she was a girl, Charles’s kid sister, not a soldier, and he couldn’t afford to lose her right now.

Mystique nodded without hesitation. “You didn’t hear the way they were—I know you already know, I know you warned us all along but…” She swallowed thickly. “The things they were saying in that room…you were right.” She sucked in a breath, shook her head briskly. “You were always right. Charles is so—he’s so _naïve_.”

The frustration in her eyes made Erik love her just a little more. It was almost soothing not to be the only one who felt a little like wringing Charles’s throat. “You understand why we need to stop them, then.”

She nodded again. “We need to get the Russians too before any more people know. We cut off the phone lines before we took them, so the Russians should only think their communication’s cut off, they shouldn’t know yet. We can—we can get them all. We’ll be safe.”

And there was fear in her voice then, fear that had been there the whole time but better hidden. Erik made himself walk to the couch, place a hand solidly on her shoulder. “We are safe. Here, we are safe, and I will keep you and your brother safe, I swear. It is up to us to make safe the rest of our kind.”

Slowly, she smiled. “You know, sometimes you’re creepily like Charles.”

Erik smiled wanly, and didn’t let that give him hope. That he knew and that she knew that they all wanted the same things did not mean Charles was likely to have realised it in the past hour.

There was a quiet pop behind him then, a puff of black smoke, and Azazel was with them once more, making no effort to conceal an only moderately interested curiosity. Erik took his hand from Mystique’s shoulder. “I’ve given Mystique instructions. I appreciate your efforts.”

Azazel only nodded.

“We won’t let you down,” Mystique promised, eyes fierce and earnest. For a moment Erik couldn’t help seeing the resemblance—she could almost be Charles’s true sister by blood.

Then Azazel had crossed to her, hand outstretched, and she had begun speaking to him quietly, questions about what he knew about Russia, where he’d taken Shaw to speak to high level officials, where they might find—

And Erik knew he was best to leave it in her hands. Let her and Azazel take responsibility for this, Riptide and Angel take responsibility for the confinement, and soon it would no longer be a collection of suddenly unemployed mercenaries and scared little girls—it would be a brotherhood, a small army with confidence and purpose and the potential to grow; a thing that he could begin to lead toward a future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Charles next chapter ;) Thanks to everyone reading so far, and to everyone who's followed from the kinkmeme. Any and all feedback is very much appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

Erik managed to occupy himself for nine minutes exploring the east corridor and familiarising himself with what lay behind the doorways before convincing himself that he had sufficient reason to visit Charles.

He hadn’t moved since Erik had left him, which was unnerving but not honestly surprising. It would be an extraordinary effort for Charles even to roll onto his other side with the bottom half of his body deadweight, and he’d had no painkillers for his back, which had reached a grotesque degree of swelling.

Erik stared at it as he knocked on the doorframe.

Charles didn’t move. “I heard the door open. And I can feel you, besides.”

He shut the door behind him, took a few steps into the room. “How?”

“You’re a void, Erik. It’s like watching a film with a black patch on the screen.”

That made sense. Erik took another few steps, over toward the bed. Closer, he could see the smaller movements of Charles’s body—the way his breath moved his back and shoulders, the way his eyelashes shifted against his cheek.

“I can’t see you from here.”

Erik wasn’t entirely sure that it was a request, but he rounded the bed anyway, wordlessly collecting a chair from over by the wall.

For a minute Charles just watched him, eyes searching, mouth all sorrow—perhaps he had realised that the tension that was pain’s sign only increased it, or perhaps his body had simply become more used to the agony of his wound. When he spoke, it was the sorrow, not the anger, though Erik suspected that was no more disappeared than the pain. “Why does it have to be a fight? We could work through this together, you and I could work together…” Charles sighed quietly. “We could all _be_ together. You can’t tell me that you won’t worry about the children, if you choose this separation.”

He couldn’t—that was half the point of it. He still wasn’t sure he had done the right thing in sending them back, though it would be worth it regardless if it won Charles’s goodwill in the long term. Child soldiers were not what he wanted, anyway, not as immature as Sean, and he doubted Hank could be convinced to design weapons. Alex would be useful, but that could be reconsidered later.

Charles, eternally optimistic, took his silence for an opening. “Give me one more chance, Erik. Try my way one more time. We won’t work with the government or the military, but we don’t have to fight them either.”

Erik kept his voice carefully level. “I can protect myself. You have the ability to protect yourself, but not all have our powers. There will be children out there whose parents and doctors and family friends will recognise them as our kind if our existence is made public.”

“We wouldn’t work publically—“

“ _We_ aren’t the problem.” Erik glared at Charles only a moment before breathing out, willing his gaze back to neutrality. “I will not allow them to do to us what the Germans did to my mother’s people. Our people need to be protected, Charles, and I will keep them safe whether or not you will help me.”

“Erik…” a whisper, a fierce whisper, then when Erik only raised an eyebrow, “Come here. Please.”

Erik knelt slowly by the bedside, eyes wary on Charles’s hands. He didn’t want to be suspicious—he wanted almost desperately not to be—but he was not a fool.

When he was down at the prone man’s level, Charles reached out one weak hand—a pathetic, abortive act, his fingertips only brushing Erik’s shirt. Reaching further would have required movement, and Erik very much doubted that even Charles had the stubbornness to move with his back in its current state. Cautious, Erik moved closer, attuning his mind to the metal watch under Charles’s suit lest he make a sudden grab for the helmet, but Charles did not, either too weak or too honest. Instead he grasped the collar of Erik’s shirt, eyes huge and sorrowful and furious and _Charles_ , and pulled until Erik’s eyes widened too, honest surprise. His intention remained unmistakable if incomprehensible as Erik wrapped steady fingers around the grasping wrist for insurance, then lowered his head carefully until he could press his mouth to Charles’s.

He let Charles control the kiss, red, red lips moving hungrily, soft like Charles’s mouth was always soft but fierce, helpless, tongue lapping wanting at the line of Erik’s lips until he let Charles deepen the kiss, slid his own tongue into Charles mouth and claimed him, reclaimed him, lit every need inside of him hard and bright. He leaned awkwardly down as much as he could to Charles’s level, held him firmly still at the nape of his neck, guarding against any strain the stupid, impossible fool might try to put on his body, tried to keep his thoughts straight as Charles sucked at the tip of his tongue, as Charles’s soft, full bottom lip gave beautifully between his teeth—

And then Charles was gone, head ducked away, face flushed and lips tight, one hand pressed oddly to his cheek with the other arm still twisted awkwardly behind him to keep him on his side, keep him from tipping onto his back.

Erik straightened slowly, moved to regain the seat then thought better of it and remained, crouching on the carpet so that their eyes were almost level. The immediate question, at least, was obvious. “You know me better than to think you’ll move me with affection. What are you doing?”

Charles refused to meet his gaze. “I have never needed an ulterior motive to kiss you.”

It was true enough, but didn’t answer the question. Erik considered several others—was Charles not furious at him for—at the very least for bringing him here against his will? If not, did that mean that he was coming to Erik’s way of thinking? Both questions seemed too stupid to voice. Charles remained looking down, palm pressed to his cheek. For once, the man’s face was a mystery. Erik couldn’t read him.

Finally he reached out slowly, slowly enough that it couldn’t surprise Charles, and lifted his hand firmly by the wrist.

Charles didn’t resist, though he didn’t move willingly either. There was a long red mark on his cheek, not a cut, nothing to bleed, but skin roughened a little.

The edge of the helmet, Erik realised belatedly.

“It’s like you’re dead,” Charles offered, almost conversationally.

Erik refused to look at his red, red lips, redder for being at Erik’s mercy a few moments ago.

Instead, he made himself choose his words carefully. “You’ve left me no choice, Charles.”

“There is always a choice, my friend.”

Erik scowled despite himself, fixed his eyes masochistically on where the drape of Charles’s body became horribly unnatural, let it drain his capacity for anger. It boiled inside him anyway, betrayal too deep to be made even. “What would you do, if I took it off?”

Charles looked at him at last, eyes more earnest and closer to pleading than Erik could bear. “Feel whole again.”

It almost, almost made him want to give in to Charles—give everything to Charles.

He reminded himself of the military men, no better than the Nazis he’d hunted all his adult life, imprisoned on the other side of the compound. Charles would turn that earnest pleading to their cause in an instant—perhaps was even thinking of that now. The thought was bitter in his mouth, nausea in his stomach. No. He held Charles’s wet blue gaze. “And what would you do to my mind?”

Charles’s eyes widened a fraction, as though he could possibly be surprised. Liar.

“Don’t, Charles.”

“Erik, my friend, I—”

“You can’t help yourself. You manipulate me as you’ve manipulated people your whole life. It’s what you are.”

He _saw_ Charles’s breath catch at that, watched his throat move as he swallowed. “I am hurt, my friend. Truly hurt.”

Erik resisted the strong temptation to scoff, and the embarrassingly almost-as-strong temptation to placate. He kept his voice steady, and strove for honesty. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Charles. It’s that I know you. You would mean well, for me as well as for—your arrogant view of the world—”

Charles’s teeth clicked together.

“—but you have seen now where that leads. What would you force on me?” He didn’t give Charles a chance to answer. “‘Thou shalt not kill,’ I think, wouldn’t you? Because that’s what you want—” he held Charles’s gaze mercilessly—“To be a benevolent god, to shape the world into your own image, to bring peace and lead humans and mutants alike into paradise.”

Charles’s eyes were dry now, and harder. “Don’t mock me, Erik.”

Erik barked a dry laugh. “Gods are a lie, Charles, and those with power are never ‘benevolent’. The only way that people are ‘shaped’ is by force.”

“People are not the monsters that you think they are.”

Erik wasn’t bored enough to start that argument again. He cut back to the core of the problem. “You could make me unable to kill, Charles, and I’m sure it would please you immensely for a while, might even outweigh your guilt for doing it to me but one day, when they’ve learned not to use metal, and they have a wooden spear at Raven’s chest, or a plastic dart at her throat, and I can’t disarm them but I can’t shoot to save her because my mind won’t allow it—then, Charles, you’d see how wrong you are.” He breathed out the sick horror of the thought, of his mind bent against him. “You see as far as the tips of your soft, well-cared-for fingers and no further.”

He could see Charles fighting anger much as he was himself—could see him locking it inside himself, refusing to lose control. So Charles. So infuriatingly Charles. The professor licked his lips, shifted his gaze from the wall back to Erik, and articulated clearly, “I would never enslave your mind, my friend. You’re right, and I won’t deny that the idea appeals, but I would never do that to you.”

And Erik so, so wanted to believe it—to take off the stupid, uncomfortable thing that made Charles so miserable and kiss him soundly and wish away the bullet wound and disappear from the world and all its hurt and fear and hate.

He was not twelve years old anymore, and he did not believe.

In his memory, Charles grappled with him in the sand, hands grasping for the physical shield around his mind.

There was a surprising lack of emotion in the words, really. “Except that you have proven that you would.”

Charles’s eyes widened, blue-sky huge. “No, my friend—”

“You would have replaced my will with yours. Perhaps you wouldn’t even have let me realise you’d done it. If I had let you remove this, Charles—” two fingers along the edge of the ugly, stupid thing—“Then you would have ‘enslaved my mind’, as you say, in an instant. And so I cannot take it off.”

Charles, impossibly, looked more hurt than he had before—crumpled, kicked.

Erik remembered grasping, tearing hands on the beach.

“I couldn’t—my dear friend, you were—it would have destroyed you, and not just you but all of us. For you to slaughter—hundreds of people, in that fashion—that is the way to make all of your fears real, Erik, to turn the world against us in fear.” His voice was fervent, desperate, furious—scared, but not of Erik. He shut his eyes, opened them again. “I couldn’t not—I had to try anything.”

It was certain, free of doubt—apologetic, but not truly an apology and certainly not a promise. A regret, that it had come to this.

Erik accepted it for what it was. It changed nothing. “And I have to keep the helmet.”

Charles gazed at him miserably a few more moments before letting his eyes drift out of focus again. “I hate this.”

Erik raised an eyebrow.

Charles didn’t look like he was watching, but perhaps they just knew each other too well for too few weeks. “Fighting with you.”

 _I hate it too_ , Erik didn’t say, _more than I should, more than I can afford, enough to madden me_. He swallowed it. “We should have been fighting from the beginning. It’s because we avoided it that we ended up like this.”

“Fighting the world, or fighting each other?” He looked tired, all of a sudden, tireder than he had, too tired to be breathing.

Both, probably, Erik knew. He didn’t say it. “You’ve known from the start where I stand, Charles.”

And when Charles didn’t answer, they both knew why—because they’d both known also what Charles had hoped, had believed, that Charles had been trying to change him, that Charles still was trying—and because even Charles was not oblivious enough to miss how arrogant that was, how disgustingly arrogant it was for him to truly believe he could ‘fix’ Erik and shape _him_ according to his will.

It was a look Erik was coming to recognise, though it did not appear often—the look on Charles’s face, in his eyes and his body, of that knowledge of his own flawed-ness, of his own arrogance.

The small corner of Erik’s mind that found it deeply satisfying was overwhelmingly outweighed by the part that just found it miserable.

He lifted Charles’s hand gently from the blanket and pressed his lips to Charles’s knuckles; one finger, two, three. He didn’t try to catch Charles’s eyes, or expect words. Charles didn’t really regret who he was, how he was—his arrogance shamed him, when it was at its most obviously condescending, but not enough to make him think his hopes wrong. That left very little to say.

He lay Charles’s hand back on the bed and linked their fingers, and resisted the urge to take Charles’s face in his hands and kiss him again. Charles would let him, he was certain of that, but the man was weak and wounded and probably in considerable pain, and it would be stupid and cruel to push him.

Instead he pulled the chair in again, one-handed, and returned to his place in it and stayed, quiet, hand covering Charles’s as it began to shake minutely.

He said nothing when the tears spilled past Charles’s lashes again to stain his cheeks and redden his eyes, but didn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks muchly to the couple of people who've left me comments; it's always nice to know the hits are actually people reading <3
> 
> To those who've come from the kinkmeme - sorry it's taking so long to get to the new stuff! Almost there!


	5. Chapter 5

When a knock sounded on the door an hour later it was Mystique, alone, and Erik was glad of it.

“Come in.”

She returned his nod of greeting but stood in the doorway. “Is there anything else we need?”

He took that to mean that the Russians had been taken care of. “One more thing, Mystique. I need you to take Azazel and find Charles a—”

“A doctor, yeah.” She overlapped his words. “I meant before that.”

Charles made a quiet, incoherent sound—he still _looked_ asleep, though. It was unnerving how hard it was to tell with the helmet on; Erik had not realised how accustomed he’d become to the low level telepathic buzz of restfulness that surrounded Charles when he slept.

He kept his voice quiet. “No, a doctor, now. A good one, Mystique.”

If her eyes narrowed a little, her eyebrows arched slightly, she didn’t let it overrun her. “I do care about him as well, you know.”

Erik felt an uncomfortable tightening in his chest—she didn’t just care about him, she’d lived with him all their lives as his sister, and Erik had come along and torn the world to pieces as he did and accidentally shot Charles. He kept his eyes on his hand on Charles’s on the bed, the side of Charles’s paler palm visible between Erik’s fingers. “I know. I’m sorry. Thank you for seeing to the most urgent matters first.”

She nodded brusquely at the edge of his field of vision. “Yeah, well—okay. I’ll—D.C., do you think? They’d have good doctors there, right? With the president?”

“Maybe.” Erik wasn’t at all sure that was likely to be the right sort of doctor. Then, he really didn’t have a damn clue. “There are some famous hospitals in New York,” he hedged. “Look conservative and respectable and wealthy and ask where to go for the best spine treatment in the country. Pretend to be dissatisfied with somewhere else. Have a son with a complete spinal injury of the lower back. If they think your questions are strange, be hysterical. Be rich enough that they'll tell you the other side of the country if it's more advanced.” It was hardly a sophisticated plan, but it would have to do.

Mystique nodded. “And bring a doctor here? Or should we take—”

“We’re not moving him again. He’s not re-entering the US, regardless. The CIA will be after him. The doctor comes here.”

She looked torn for a moment, but she nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Erik nodded, feeling only mildly farcical.

She paused half-way out the door. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

Erik didn’t look up—didn’t tell her the truth—didn’t even stay silent. He made a noncommittal sound that he knew she would take as affirmation. She’d know soon enough. Let her fetch the doctor first.

She left at a brisk walk, pausing long enough to shut the door very quietly behind her.

Erik gazed blankly for several moments at Charles on the bed. He’d served in the military, and seen his share of gunshots well before that, besides. He had a basic understanding of wound care and traumatic injury, but his knowledge of treating spinal injuries really only extended as far as keeping the back straight and still. He’d done a god-awful job of that so far. Instead he’d focused on minimising pain—one of those easy lies that sounds like the right thing to do but is really horribly selfish. He didn’t want to see Charles in pain, and what little he’d done at all had been to that end rather than long term thinking. Perhaps if he'd kept Charles in place on the beach, protected him there, he'd have a better chance of walking. Hardly mattered now.

He wondered for the fortieth time since Charles had fallen asleep whether the man was cold, considered for the fortieth time folding the quilt over him, and decided for the fortieth time that since Charles had done nothing to suggest he might be cold, it was better to leave things as they were.

None of this was an efficient use of his time. He needed to set Riptide and possibly Angel to organising supplies: food and necessities for the six of them, plus enough to keep the prisoners alive long enough to extract every bit of information that could be useful. Possibly supply would be done more easily with Azazel, though—it had been several hours’ walk to the bierhaus from the village of Villa Gesell.

That and the interrogations aside, next priority had to be destroying what information the CIA had about them, and about Shaw’s network—no, first priority above all had to be destroying their information on Charles, or at least ensuring somehow that they couldn’t connect him to Westchester. Erik had conceded leaving the boys behind partly for Charles, in the hope that it might eventually make him more co-operative, partly because he wasn’t at all sure they’d cooperate if Charles was discontented and he didn’t need three—four, if he included Charles, which he chose not to—malcontents to almost outnumber those there willingly. Neither reason meant he wished to see them slaughtered or, as bad, imprisoned and used.

He had to find a way to secure the boys, then, and then find out how much of Shaw’s network he was able to use safely.

 _Then_ he needed a plan for finding mutants—in time, Charles would come around, and then Erik was confident that either Charles could rebuild Cerebro himself or he could talk Hank into helping. Until then, he had nothing. He wondered how great a radius the other telepath’s powers spanned. He would have to retrieve Emma Frost from the CIA. If she was no help, then possibly Raven—Mystique—she could go town to town posing as a specialist in unique medical conditions, hope to uncover some foolish parents mistaking their child’s gifts for illness or, much more useful, possibly even some adult mutants willing to expose themselves to an apparent expert. Anyone useful he would keep, others he would send to stay with the boys at Westchester. He needed an army, but an army needs a people to protect; he would have to be sure he could protect mutant non-combatants. Regardless, gathering was the key. Gathering together in power before the humans could gather them together for the slaughter.

He should have been doing something about it—telling Riptide to obtain supplies, or having them think of ideas for recruitment, or beginning interrogation of the thirty or so Americans and he had no idea how many Russians locked up in a series of detainment cells that he’d allowed Riptide to show him just long enough to know they’d serve his purpose for now.

Charles had been sleeping fitfully for an hour though, now, and he slept still, and Erik hadn’t as yet quite managed to bring himself to raise his hand from his friend’s on top of the bedcovers.

It wasn’t just that he might wake, Erik reminded himself—Charles had suffered a severe, as yet untreated spinal injury and anything could happen with him left in here alone. He could fall out of bed and it would be disastrous. He could wake up and panic and do himself more damage, not to mention cause himself a great deal of pain. Erik wasn’t sure what else could happen, or how likely Charles was to fall out of the frankly very large bed in which he was dozing, but it felt safest to stay.

He was still there, watching the fairly one-sided war between Charles’s mind and his body, when the doctor arrived. Charles’s mind had clearly decided that the best course of action to avoid reality was sleep, sleep in which there was no need to notice that one could not feel one’s legs. His body, on the other hand, must still have been causing him significant pain and that, Erik assumed, was what made Charles jerk and start and whimper in his sleep. Mind had always been the greater part for Charles, and so he was sleeping.

The doctor didn’t come straight in to Charles in the bedroom—rather it was Angel who rapped on the door.

“Mystique?”

“Angel.” She sounded a little uncomfortable but not afraid. Good.

“Yes?”

“She brought a doctor for him. Said to get you.”

Erik connected the rest of the dots easily enough—Mystique and Azazel had seized a doctor from somewhere in the United States and teleported him to Argentina, leaving him confused, disoriented and probably profoundly un-coperative. That, Erik would be the one to fix.

Charles was going to have the best of medical care, and that was the simplest kind of fact. Erik would not tolerate argument.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments guys, v. much appreciated. This is the last chapter of repost from the kinkmeme, next chapter is new stuff (adventures with doctors... :S)! In other news, have just finished meme posting another fill that also sits within this verse, so that will be the next thing once I finish posting this :D Thanks again for the comments, next chapter tomorrow :)


	6. Chapter 6

The doctor looked a lot like every other man they’d dragged here today.

This one, however, was alone, had a swathe of fabric in his mouth that appeared to have once been part of a couch cushion, and had both wrists trapped in one of Azazel’s hands.

Erik raised an eyebrow as he entered the room, the captive breaking into muted, incomprehensible sounds through his gag.

“I gagged him,” Mystique supplied unnecessarily, a note of uncertainty, seeking assurance that she had done the right thing, “But he’s probably still making enough mental noise to wake my brother.” She was blonde and blue eyed, maybe 50, white dress tailored cleanly to her body, long coat expensive in its details. Diamonds were elegantly simple in their settings but in large and sparkling evidence in several places. Conservative, respectable, wealthy, not to be ignored. She'd done her job well.

The man was wearing a pair of cleanly polished, silver-rimmed spectacles. Erik beckoned one-fingered, just theatrical enough to serve his purpose, and let them float slowly to rest in his hand as the man’s eyes widened. He examined them disinterestedly before floating them back to rest on their owner’s nose. The doctor shivered at the metal’s touch.

“Now,” Erik began, a practised tone—one he’d used for a decade on Nazis and ex-Nazis and those who helped Nazis to hide. “You seem to be giving my friends some trouble, Herr Doktor.”

Mystique frowned pale, rose-painted lips. “He’s not German…”

“I know.” Erik motioned for Azazel to release the man’s arms. Freed, he didn’t go for the gag but stood, eyes wild. When it became clear that the doctor was not going to move, Erik made the offer with an air of conditional generosity: “You may free your own mouth, if you can be quiet.”

It still took the doctor several moments to proceed; Erik could almost see the mind working behind the eyes, evaluating the chances of provoking violence. Thin, sure fingers reached to unknot the rough-edged strips of fabric, unwrapped them. The man coughed a little as he pulled from his mouth a large chunk of foam and then the last of the cloth. Mystique must have mutilated a whole cushion; Erik wondered what the man had been saying to spur her. The couches here appeared to be in tact, so perhaps it had been where they'd found him. If not, the walls here were truly soundproof; he'd heard nothing from the bedroom.

He waited until the man had made the gag a small pile on the carpet, straightened again, rubbed at his mouth. Erik smiled without warmth—practised, again. “My name is Magneto, and I asked my friends to bring me an exceptional physician specialising in spinal injuries. Is that what you are?”

The moment in which the man considered lying was transparent but he did, after a poorly concealed glance at his kidnappers still close by, decide on—“Yes. I work at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation. We are considered by many the premiere institution in the country for—”

“Excellent,” Erik interrupted him. “You would be confident, then, in treating a gunshot wound to the lower back.”

The man frowned, searching the words for a trap. “…Yes,” he provided eventually. “We work with veterans. It’s not a wholly uncommon injury.”

“Good.” Erik offered the man a thin smile. “In that case, Doctor…”

“—Calker,” the man provided after a moment’s hesitation. “My name is John Calker.”

“Doctor Calker,” Erik agreed. “Here is my suggestion. You will calmly and skilfully go about treating my friend. You will not complain about the circumstances by which you came to treat him, but will conduct yourself in a professional manner. My friend will read your mind, so I will ask you to focus your thoughts on the task at hand. If you follow these suggestions, then you will find that I am entirely willing to be reasonable with regard to what requests you might make afterward.”

“Read my—look, I—”

“Do you feel able to cooperate, doctor?”

The twitch of a fingertip floated the doctor’s glasses just above the surface of his skin again, for emphasis.

The doctor breathed slowly in, then out, hands splayed anxiously by his sides. “Look,” he choked after several more breaths. “I just want to get home to my family. I don’t know where we are or how we got here or who you are, but I just want—if I take a look at your friend, you’ll—?”

Erik smiled easily, answered obliquely. “As I suggested, doctor. If you cooperate, then I will be very willing to do the same.”

The man didn’t miss the holes in the answer, the lack of guarantee—that was obvious, and reassuring. A fool didn’t make a good doctor. Nor, however, did he miss that he was not well positioned to argue. He nodded slowly. “Alright then. Show me your friend.”

***

Erik had the others—the girls and the doctor—wait outside the bedroom. He’d already sent Azazel and Riptide to check on the prisoners and then seek supplies, take rather than buy—no sense in setting bells ringing on his accounts, or Charles's, or Shaw's. He almost shook Charles's shoulder before thinking better of it. Instead he touched two fingers to the sleeping man’s cheek, softly. Charles stirred slightly, a heavier breath out. Erik slid the fingertips up to Charles’s temple, the place where he always half-expected to find Charles’s own fingerprints, then across his left eyelid.

His eyelashes fluttered, then his eyelids, once, twice, then—

“Aauh!—”

Charles cut off his own waking shout before Erik could open his mouth to calm the man. “Charles?”

He breathed heavily a few moments then—“Erik?”

Erik rounded the bed quickly to be sure his friend could see him without turning. “Yes. I’ve brought you a doctor. I’m bringing him in now.”

Charles stared at the wall, breathing.

“Charles?”

“I can’t…I thought it was a…” he trailed off, then—“I can’t move my legs.”

Erik shut his eyes. “I’ll bring in the doctor.”

Charles nodded minutely, winced and stilled again. “My back hurts like…”

Erik could imagine a dozen things it might hurt like, but doubted any of Charles's comparisons would be adequate.

“I’ll bring in the doctor,” he repeated dumbly, feeling utterly useless and a little guilty for thinking of his own pain. Guilt. Huh. The things that Charles put in his head.

He opened the door by the handle without leaving Charles’s bedside and Mystique, still blonde and older, took it for the invitation it was. Dr. Calker followed as many steps behind her as he could without being prodded by Angel behind him.

He was barely two steps into the room before Charles reacted—like his footsteps had alerted Charles to his thoughts, or the man had only just returned to focus on his fears.

“Erik…” Mostly breath, and the edges of fury in his face. It was the first time he’d ever heard Charles honestly surprised in horror rather than awe. It was absurd, Erik reflected, that Charles had not been truly surprised by his control of the missiles on the beach but was taken aback by a single man. Apparently Charles did not share that perspective. “Swear to me that you will not harm this man.”

The determination in the set of his jaw, the burn in his eyes was all too familiar to Erik; it had been the first way he’d ever seen Charles’s face, in floodlights in dark water. It was exhausting, and frustrating, and he was sorely tempted to pretend that the helmet had rendered him temporarily deaf. He dismissed that notion mostly because he needed Charles to be calm. “Fine.” Stupid, to let Charles think he would be swayed like this, but it was barely a concession. He had no immediate need or plans to do any harm to the doctor.

The problem, of course, was that the doctor interpreted the situation with unfortunate accuracy—he gauged that he might have an ally in Charles, and despite Erik’s ‘suggestion’ minutes earlier, pressed his advantage before Erik could do anything about it.

“I have two daughters,” the man gibbered, “Two daughters and a wife at home, please, I’ll help you, I’ll do what I can for you, just please—”

Charles had wearily dragged a hand up to his temple, and the man’s blathering ceased.

Erik stared.

“Calm your mind, doctor,” Charles was murmuring, low and strained but clear.

The words echoed oddly, bitterly against the pitted walls of Erik’s skull. Familiar. Sickeningly familiar.

“My daughters…” the man whispered helplessly, unable to maintain his hysteria under the force of Charles’s influence.

“Be calm,” Charles went on without pause. “You need not be afraid, doctor. My friend has brought you here because I am—” the smallest catch of breath, half of a gasp—“very badly in need of your help.” Charles paused a moment, breathing. Erik refused the anger that welled irrationally as Charles spoke, tried to think of something to say that would reorient this consultation without distressing his currently fragile invalid. Said invalid, however, gave him little chance. “I swear,” Charles continued a moment later, “That you will come to no harm here, and that you will be returned home to your family tonight before they have a chance to miss you.” He even managed a weak but glowing little smile, though only Erik could see his face.

Erik resisted the sharp urge to knock him unconscious.

“Erik?”

Erik blinked.

“I can make that promise in good faith, can I not?”

“Charles…” he shook his head, resisting the frustration rising.

“He has done nothing to deserve your anger.”

“You’ll need a doctor longer than tonight.”

“Then he can come back.”

The man was looking back and forth between them like his neck was loose, though he mostly looked at Charles.

Erik kept his groan silent. “He can’t be brought here every day and then sent home again to be brought back—”

“Why not?”

It was so moronic a question that Erik wondered briefly whether the spinal injury could be only the lesser brother to a paired harm to the brain—he dismissed that thought very quickly as both stupid and too nauseating to consider. He took a few steps closer to the bed and met his friend’s eye. “The CIA is looking for you, Charles, I can guarantee you. We have most of those with firsthand experience of your powers here, but that will not hold off searches forever. I will not risk—”

“I have no idea where we are,” the man interrupted, sounding terrified but oddly triumphant. “None whatsoever. I don’t know who you are and the only place I’ve ever seen the CIA is on the television. I’m no risk to you. None at all.”

Charles raised an eyebrow as though this were incontrovertible evidence of his rightness in all things.

Erik ignored him and considered where he had been placed. The man had interrupted him. He should be punished, if Erik was to keep control over the situation. On the other hand, he needed this man to give the best possible care to Charles. It was true that he might be more willing in that regard if not made an enemy. It was also true that the doctor had no way to know their location, and that Azazel made it impossible for them to be followed here. The doctor could contact authorities and give away whatever he gleaned, but that could be kept minimal, and Erik could deal with it regardless. It had never been difficult to stop men talking. Fine, then. He turned the full force of his steel focus on the doctor. “You will be returned to your family tonight.”

The man breathed a pitiful rush of relief, and the fondness on Charles’s face was almost enough to make Erik take it back. Almost. This was a matter of strategy, not of pride.

“You will be brought back here when necessary to care for Charles. If you lie about how often Charles needs your presence, you will suffer. If you speak a word to any other person about Charles or I or any of our affairs or associates, you will suffer. If you force me to make you suffer, then I shall ensure that your family also suffer. Do you understand, doctor?”

The man nodded slowly, stiffly. He’d formed a question by the time he’d finished the movement. “What will I tell my wife?”  
Erik shrugged one shoulder. “You’re working late. You’re having an affair. You’ve taken up gambling.” Charles opened his mouth—to protest, to argue, to engage in a lengthy discussion of alternatives—Erik didn’t want to know. He was fighting the urge to just turn the man onto his stomach where he couldn’t talk; he might have, he thought with somewhat half-hearted vindictiveness, had Mystique not been at the foot of the bed. Instead he gave up subtlety and shut Charles’s mouth in the obvious way, with three fingers at the corner of his lips.

“Ehr-ik—”

It was a feeble protest, and Erik was tired. He clamped his hand down the rest of the way over the idiot’s mouth, not hard enough to hurt his breathing, but. Let him try to argue through that. If he was angry later, Erik could always claim to have thought him delirious.

He turned his gaze back to the wide-eyed doctor as Charles glared hurt up at him and Mystique chewed nervously on her lip, still lipstick-coated and human-coloured. It was well past time he took back control of this negotiation. “Doctor Calker.” The doctor’s eyes sprang guiltily up from Erik’s hand sealed over his friend’s mouth. “It matters very little to me what you tell anyone, so long as it is both false and convincing. It will serve you well to believe that that makes it at the very least a secondary concern for you. For now, I would like nothing to matter to you but the business on which you are here.” He indicated Charles, breathing shallowly through his nose, with an inclination of the head.

The man nodded stiffly. He knew he’d pushed as far as he safely could. More than that, though, his eyes had moved, no longer flitting between faces but fixed, lower.

“Is the bullet still in there?”

Erik ignored the question a moment; held Charles’s gaze for several seconds before removing his hand. Charles stayed quiet, but the accusation in his eyes was thunderous, most of all because Erik knew it was not so much accusation as hurt, betrayal.

“May I…” the doctor spoke again, and Erik looked up to see him half-way to kneeling by the bed, hovering for permission.

He nodded curtly. “Go ahead. I removed the bullet immediately. I have it here if its characteristics are important.”

The doctor was nodding, probably meaninglessly. “Several hours since the injury?”

“Three.”

“And the patient has been moved.”

Erik pushed unease to the back of his throat. Staying on the beach would have been suicide. “Yes. Minimally.”

The doctor nodded again, still crouched to survey the wound from inches away.

Charles’s eyes were squeezed shut, one fist clenched in the duvet, the other pressing fingernails into the mattress. Erik almost reached down to lay a hand over the shaking fist, but thought better of it. The gesture would probably not be welcome, not for now. He wondered whether Charles could feel the doctor’s breath on his skin.

“You have a few options,” the doctor began, still peering at the mess where Charles’s back ended. “Synthetic corticosteroids are the most efficient way to reduce inflammation and they have become far less expensive, but the cost is still prohibitive for some patients—”

“Cost is not an issue.”

The doctor looked up from his position on the carpet, blinking. “Oh—of course. Ah, given—this situation—supply could also—”

“We will obtain the things you need.”

The doctor swallowed. “Well.” He nodded several times more, fingertips hovering half an inch from Charles’s skin. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chaaaaarles... ;_; Next chapter should be tomorrow :) Comments are love <3


	7. Chapter 7

An hour later, Mystique and Azazel had been to and from New Jersey three times for medical supplies, Charles had sworn breathlessly but effusively that if it would stop his spine bursting from his skin he was ready to trust the doctor with any and all possible side effects of any and all relevant drugs, and Erik was more tired than he remembered being since childhood.

It was not, Azazel had determined, possible to bring the vast mass of x-ray equipment to the base via teleportation, which meant that further concessions were inevitable.

Charles had been attached to an IV drip, an ugly needle into the soft of his elbow that Erik had had no choice but to trust. It was only minimally reassuring that Charles could read the doctor’s thoughts; Charles was increasingly delirious.

Calker had warned that as the most immediate physical shock of the injury faded, the pain might intensify; this had been briefly, horribly evident before the addition of morphine to the drip. The morphine had dulled Charles to the pain, but also sent him in and out of consciousness, lying mostly in sleep, waking occasionally to mumble incoherently about pain and his back and his legs and Erik and mutants and innocence.

And so Erik was left to try to ignore the possible side-effects the doctor had listed, machine-gun rattle, of the drugs being pumped into Charles—weakness, blindness, madness—and to consider the injustice and the irony that this was his first act of this sudden war, and to try to decide whether the doctor was likely to try to betray them, and whether jamming shut the doors or hoping to slip under the radar would be a more effective strategy while Charles was x-rayed in the morning, and whether he would allow the doctor to perform surgery on Charles if he declared it necessary…

Erik came awake unaware of what had roused him, unaware of when he’d fallen asleep, and with the turned wood of his chair’s arms imprinted in one of his wrists.

“Ican…”

Barely a sound, less than words.

Erik squinted at the bed. No one was in the room besides he and Charles—the first moments of waking had established that, long habits of suspicion. The lights were out—Mystique, more than likely. He was half surprised she wasn’t in here herself.

“Ican…ican move…” Charles was breathing too quickly to articulate his words.

Erik slid from his chair to kneel by the bed in one easy motion. “Charles.”

“Ican move…" Inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale—"oh god I can't move…”

“Charles, look at me.” Erik made his voice firm but received no response until he followed the words with two fingers at the man’s temple.

That brought Charles's gaze springing up to his face, at least.

There was no clear focus left.  The gaze was not Charles's, seeing through and letting in, challenging, appealing, beguiling; it was bleary, unfocused, unfixed, shivering eratically between Erik's features and the dark before them and the dark behind them.  Erik refused to blink or to shift away.  He made himself swallow the irony. “Calm your mind, Charles.”

“Who—how…”

The words had not slowed his breathing.

Erik leaned in until their noses almost touched, bracing his free hand on the mattress. “Calm, Charles, be calm. It’s me. It’s Erik. You need to be calm now. Breathe.”

It took a moment but slowly, marginally, Charles’s breathing slowed. Erik realised belatedly that his own breathing was quicker than it should have been. Wonderful.

“…Erik?”

He made a conscious effort to breathe slowly, normally—calmly—as he returned Charles’s searching gaze. “Yes. I’m here. Come now, Charles. Calm.”

“I can’t…it’s like you’re not…”

Like swallowing lead, like a mass of dirt weighing his stomach down to his feet. “Don’t worry about that for now.” Cowardly, but—to remind him of the helmet would only be a further stress. _As much as possible,_ the doctor had said with skeptical eyes, _he should not be allowed to become agitated_. No agitation, then. Cowardly but practical. This was not a time for argument.

Charles looked lost, confused with an intensity that for a man of his intelligence only came with drugs. He was calming, though, slowly. He breathed with Erik, beat for beat; inhale, exhale. Erik made himself use that, made himself slow his breath again, gradually, inhale and count and exhale and count. Charles followed, ten breaths, then twenty, then a full two minutes. They could both have been sleeping.

Charles's gaze settled with his breath, though Erik's face filled most of his field of vision.  “I can’t…” the panic in the words had been dulled by drowsiness, by the pull of sleep breathing. Their articulation was clearer, though. “I can’t move, Erik.”

Erik wondered with something heavier, duller than horror whether this was going to happen every time Charles woke up.

“I can’t move.” Scared. Weak, and tired, and scared, and morphine-blunt, but still so Charles, trying to reason it out, and that made it so much worse.

Erik made himself refocus his eyes, return the terror in his friend’s with calm. “I know.” He stroked the fingertips at Charles’s temple slowly down his cheek, the line of his jaw, quieting. “You’re wearing a brace, Charles, to protect your back. The doctor put you in a brace. Do you remember?”

Red lips pursed slightly. Erik could see him thinking. “…my legs.”

Erik breathed in, held his calm. “Yes. Your back is hurt, and that interrupts your brain’s signals to your legs.”

For several long seconds, Charles just breathed. “I thought it was a dream.”

“I know.” And he did, because he wanted to as well, only he knew like Charles didn’t that it was never a nightmare, that nightmares were nearly always real.

“I can’t move my legs.”

The words were experimental, testing the concept—they didn’t ask for a reply. Erik stroked his fingertips again down Charles’s jawline, instinctive.

Charles tilted his face minutely into the touch. “And I’m wearing a brace now, so I can’t move at all.”

“You can move your head, and your arms. Just for now. When Raven comes back, we’re going to turn you over so that you don’t get sores from lying still. And you’ll be able to move more once the doctor finishes your back and the brace is gone.”

“But my legs…”

It was the first sign Charles had shown of comprehending.

It wasn’t certain, the doctor had said. The physical shock of the injury would mask its true nature for weeks, he had explained, nervous; spinal shock would make it impossible to tell without x-rays whether the break was complete, shock could even be responsible for the paraplegia—and Erik had acceded to that. They would go to New Jersey tomorrow, against his better judgement, attempt to let Calker conduct x-rays without attracting the notice of any other staff, then, if necessary, surgery. Tomorrow they would know for sure whether the break was complete.

Erik refused to hope. He had been sure from the moment he’d pulled the bullet that Charles had lost his legs. That remained the likelihood and he was determined that in his mind, it remain the truth unless proven otherwise. There was nothing, he knew, so foolhardy, as allowing hope to break a man.

“You can’t move your legs,” he confirmed.

“I can’t move my legs.”

“We’ll be fine, Charles. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

The slightest nod. “Okay.”

There was no way that he could process this through the morphine, Erik knew that. He could lie here all night repeating it—I can’t move my legs—but he still wouldn’t comprehend, not properly. There would be time enough later for that, when his mind was clear and the truth was unavoidable.

Erik shifted his knees awkwardly on the carpet and leaned in the short distance to rest his brow against Charles’s. From here the man’s eyes were huge and blue, even in the dark. Erik stroked the pad of a thumb along his hairline, pulled sweat-damp hair away from his face. “We’ll get through this, Charles. I promise.”

A quiet, incoherent sound. He was drifting toward sleep again.

Erik turned his head carefully, wordlessly, to press their lips together. He kissed him once, twice, chaste, ignoring the way Charles’s lips parted at once at the touch.

Then he drew back, released the grounding of Charles’s skin beneath his fingertips, sat back on his heels. He watched another moment before pulling the chair closer to the bedside, climbing to his feet and sitting back down, looking down now at his friend, calm and hazy, so close to sleep.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been hurt this badly.” Charles’s voice was woozy, speculative, thick with morphine.

Erik kept his answer quiet, neutral. “No, I can’t imagine you have.”

Another indistinct sound, too close to a whimper, or a quietly sounding sigh. “Have you ever been hurt this badly?”

 _Yes_ , Erik wanted to say, _This is what happens if we don’t fight, this is what the world does to the weak this is what we can expect if we do not stand—_ or, even more, too much to deny the wanting, _yes, and I lived through it, and you will too, and you will be fine, and you will be okay, and this is nothing, nothing at all to be afraid of._ It wasn’t true.

“No,” he answered instead, quietly. “I haven’t.”

Charles made another quiet sound in his throat, a sigh, almost content, perverse and opiate.

Erik swallowed thickly, reminded himself that this, if not the injury, was only temporary.

“Good,” Charles murmured, almost a whisper.

“I’m sorry?”

But Charles was breathing deeply, fallen back into sleep. Erik stared at the man’s closed eyelids, unable to slow his own breath. He was still wearing the helmet. Charles couldn’t possibly—there was no way—could the morphine have acted to intensify his powers? It was absurd—there was no reason—but Charles had clearly replied to his thought, if vaguely.

He reached up to place a hand carefully on either side of the shield, careful not to shift it, careful not to knock it out of place—it hadn’t moved. It was in place as it should be. Then—?

It was twenty-five minutes of staring intently at the sleeping telepath trying to plan, trying to think, how could it have happened, how could it be prevented, how could—before Erik realised his mistake.

He was so used to Charles hearing his surface thoughts that he hadn’t considered the other possibility.

 _No_ , Erik had told him, _I haven’t_ ever been hurt this badly, and

 _Good_ , Charles had smiled

and drifted into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading thus far, and for the comments :D Next chapter should be Sunday...*goes off to write* :)


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning was predictably nightmarish.

Charles woke up when Mystique came in to help turn him onto his other side. He protested incoherently, pushing at them with weak hands then screaming repeatedly, hoarsely as they shifted him. He was delirious, inconsolable; it took whole minutes to get him to recognise them, minutes more to calm him. Raven was ready to steal the doctor back from his bed, but Erik wanted the man to have sleep if he was going to perform surgery on Charles, and he doubted the doctor would be of use in this. Erik knew how to increase the morphine a little, and that did its job soon enough.

Four hours later, eight am, and a knock on the door. Erik rose wearily, noted Mystique still sleeping in the second chair she’d dragged in, opened the door, nodded to Riptide on the other side.

“The others are awake?”

“Angel’s making breakfast.”

Erik nodded again. He’d barely slept the previous night in Westchester: adrenaline, anticipation, final hours of practice, fear and hate and joy and fury and—and then last night, two hours, maybe three, in his chair? Three hours of watching Charles fall to the sand in his mind, watching the bullet fly from his hand and hit Charles, things he hadn’t seen in reality; three hours of overstated blood spatter that soaked into the sand in defiance of reality, and cries of pain and a gun in his hand and accusing whispers.

“So…”

Riptide was still standing in front of him, loose white sleep pants and a plush robe and already-combed hair, smirking slightly.

Erik blinked his eyes clear of sleep. “Eat. Dress. Feed the prisoners. Nothing special but I want them conscious and coherent. They’re less useful starved. Be ready to leave here in two hours.”

Not his most intimidating visage, perhaps, but at least he’d managed a tone of command.

Riptide’s smirk retreated obligingly. “Sure.”

Erik directed a meaningful gaze down the hall, then watched him leave before shutting the door again.

Mystique woke easily, the slightest touch on her shoulder; she was not sleeping deeply. She was blue in her sleep, but she formed reflexively into her standard blonde avatar as she woke.

“Mystique.”

She blinked, then sat up straight. “Charles…” Her eyes fell on the bed before she could finish the sentence. “He’s sleeping.”

“We need to wake him.”

She squeezed her eyes tight, stood with a roll of her shoulders.

He’d been hoping she might catch herself. “First, you need to take off that face.”

Eyes wide, a moment’s hurt and then a slow, shy smile. She rippled swiftly back into her own skin, pebbled blue, unclothed, yellow-eyed. Her lips changed colour, but the smile stayed the same. “I’ve been doing it so long…I forgot.” The smile curved a little fuller. “Thank you.”

Erik turned away. Charles was sleeping soundly, more soundly than he had all the time Erik had watched last night.

Mystique approached a step behind him. “Erik?”

“Magneto,” he corrected. “We should get used to it. The less they can discover of our pasts, the better. Used names are a burden we don’t need.” He knelt by the bed without looking back at her. “Seems a pity to wake him, but we’ll need to.”

“We could leave him a while longer?” Her voice was soft and low as she came to crouch beside Erik, watching her brother’s face. “Dr. Calker said not to come until after ten.”

Erik had no intention of complying with that request. Calker had no way of knowing where they were, but nothing was stopping him from calling the CIA to New Jersey. The x-rays couldn’t be done at night, he’d said, an extra patient would be noticed at night, as would an extra doctor working, and there was security, in case of morphine addicts, and…and Erik had agreed to come in the day. Then not too early, the doctor had insisted, early there would be few outpatient admissions to disguise them, and not too late—they’d agreed, in the end, upon ten o’ clock, mid-morning, when the hospital would be busy enough that they would go unnoticed. It was early enough too that, if necessary, the doctor could perform surgery and Erik could take Charles back before it got too late for them to remain unnoticed. The doctor had been scandalised by that, the idea of moving a patient immediately post-surgery, and Erik had suggested he find a way to do the surgery outside of the hospital. They had parted ways at a stalemate.

Azazel and Mystique had taken the doctor to his doorstep. Mystique had posed as a fellow doctor, met the family—wife probably close to a decade younger and dyeing the grey out of her hair, two teenaged ‘daughters’ that were in fact granddaughters, father dead in the war, mother dead by her own hand not long after. Erik had made clear to John Calker the purpose of this visit—they would know where he lived, and they would know who he cared for, and they would use that knowledge if necessary. Mystique, greying and balding and sedately suited, had smiled and spoken warmly with Mrs. Calker, careful with her conversation, her choice of words. Mrs. Calker would never suspect that Mystique was four decades her junior, but better for the deception if the woman saw nothing amiss at all. With a deep, aged voice she had given paternal compliments to the girls and even patted the younger one on the shoulder with a wrinkled, masculine hand. Their grandfather had shaken slightly throughout the meeting, so obviously ready to snap, to cry and flee, that Mystique wondered how his wife missed it. The woman was a good hostess, she supposed. Mrs. Calker’s attention was on her guest.

Now it was eight am or thereabouts, trickling rapidly toward eight-thirty, and there was as much of a plan as the variables would allow. At nine, Erik would send Mystique and Azazel to the hospital to scout. Erik had great confidence in Mystique's ability to appear innocuous, but by nine it should be easy; he was certain there'd be visitors loitering by then. Even if Calker had called in their enemies, Charles's sister wouldn't be apprehended. She would check for obvious surveillance, watch the staff and make sure they all seemed legitimate. She would find Doctor Calker, and find out where they should bring Charles. Then, at ten, as agreed, the full party would arrive. Calker would no doubt annoy him with resentful prattle about Mystique calling on him earlier than expected, but he wasn't a fool; he would shut up and obey instructions. The doctor had swayed alarmingly the first time Mystique had demonstrated her abilities, though he had, to his credit, managed to keep his feet. Erik thought he’d be frightened by her a good while yet. Azazel he hadn’t explained, but he assumed the doctor would reason that one out before long. The rest of their gifts Erik had kept hidden, but for hints of his own. Element of surprise if the doctor betrayed them, and shock could be useful if further intimidation was needed.

All of this left him with Charles, sunk in the bottom of sleep with morphine like concrete bricks keeping him down; a few score men caged somewhere in the compound needing at least a little maintenance; two mercenaries and a dissolute girl needing rather more maintenance, if he intended to keep them; and Raven, peering at her brother with deep concern then shooting disconcerting smiles at Erik. And a little under two hours. Well.

“Fine.” He stood swiftly, resisted the urge to touch Charles’s face before he left. He didn’t think the man would wake, but it would be foolish. “It shouldn’t take long to feed him breakfast, and there’s not much else we can do for now.”

Mystique nodded, then followed as Erik moved for the door. Her eyes stayed over her shoulder on Charles.

“We both need to eat,” Erik added, though his appetite was markedly absent. He shut the door behind her, quietly, and they took their conversation out into the hall, then the lounge, then down the south corridor, far from where it could wake Charles.

***

Deep in the dark clear water of sleep, Charles floated weightless, then flew bodiless through the minds of millions, then stared motionless, tied flat, strapped down. There was fire in his back, a hot coal, a swelling burn that distorted his flesh and made his thoughts thick, unyielding. That was secondary, though, to the binding--straps around his ankles, around his knees, around his thighs, around his hips, around his stomach.

He couldn't move--it was tight, the binding, so tight that his legs seemed to ignore the will of his mind, hazy at it was. He was tied down, to something hard, the straps tight, his back hot and everything else very cold, and he was helpless: helpless and straining and very, very still.

Still, so still, too still to even shiver, Charles breathed in the dark, and remained calm, and listened hard for the sounds of metal buckling and breaking and bursting through. It was dark, and cold, and he couldn't move, and his back was on fire, but he was strong. He could wait this out, and his pride would recover from having to be saved. It was only a matter of time.

Erik would come and free him, he was sure of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter day after tomorrow (Tuesday) :) Thanks so much to commenters (for being nice about my rambling responses as much as for commenting!) and to the lovely people who've left kudos :D


	9. Chapter 9

Breakfast was good food, hot food, meat and eggs and bread and butter and strong coffee. Angel prepared the food with better spirits than she’d displayed yesterday; her wing was already healing, which delighted her and pleased Erik as well. Alex had done them a favour. Now they knew she'd heal. Someone had emptied the trolley of guns, and when they were done eating it was loaded with bread in loaves, fresh yesterday, and two large casks of water. It would hardly thrill the prisoners but it was fresh, better than they deserved, and it would keep them healthy enough for now. With Shaw, revenge had been the only option left. This time, there was still time for prevention. Revenge would have its place when the men were no longer useful.

Mystique wheeled the trolley down the north corridor in the visage of a black-haired man, stocky but not overly tall, sombrely, roughly dressed—let them wonder a little about their captors’ numbers. Erik debated paying a visit to the cells when Mystique returned, but decided against it. Stay away, and they’d know he was too important, too busy with other business, to bother. Stay away and they’d be scared stiff when he did question them.

Instead, after breakfast, he ignored the desire to return to Charles’s room and had Azazel take him away, far away, beyond any reach Charles had ever dreamed of for his powers—far away to another hidden base, another warren of dark rooms where, at last, he could remove the helmet. It was irrationally terrifying, standing without it; barely believable that two days ago he'd freely allowed Charles into his mind. He allowed himself two breaths in and two out to replace that nervousness with sense, and then took time to shower, shave, comb back his hair. His clothes were at Westchester, but he had no interest in wearing Shaw’s. He changed back into what Azazel had brought him to wear last night; placed the helmet firmly back where it belonged. The blue and yellow suit he’d burned, with Mystique’s and the scraps of Charles’s. Erik had cut it off him, rather than risk his back by trying to manoeuvre him out of it the usual way. He wore a pale hospital gown now, and it made him look even paler than his illness, skin fluctuating from fever red to a grey pallor that made Erik ill.

By nine, instructions had been given and all was prepared for the day’s covert incursion into enemy territory. That didn’t mean a great deal—weapons had been secreted inside coats, Erik had concealed a coiling length of steel wire, plans had been discussed for all eventualities, tests had determined that so long as he left the rest of them behind, Azazel could transport a table with a man on it—Charles could be brought back stabilised that way post-surgery if necessary.

Mystique and Azazel left without ceremony, she inoffensive in a drab suit and a greying head of hair, he well-practiced at staying out of sight.

It was tempting, after that, to return to his chair in the bedroom, but Erik knew it would be unwise. Riptide and Angel had not come with him for the purpose of protecting Charles; indeed, that was only a shadow of his own purpose. There were other things to accomplish, bigger things, and he couldn’t afford to wait until Charles was lucid. So he sat in the lounge with the two other remaining mutants and discussed maps of Shaw’s holdings worldwide, the benefits and otherwise of retrieving Emma Frost today or tomorrow or next week, ways of seeking mutants without Cerebro, other mutants they knew of that Shaw had destroyed.

At nine-forty, Erik soft-boiled an egg, cut several thick slices of bread and buttered them heavily. He left his two mutants working on language that might tempt mutants to reveal themselves to an ‘expert’ without alerting the broader community, and headed for the bedroom, plate of food in one hand, large glass of water in the other.

In keeping with the hell of a morning, of course, Charles did not want to wake. Having stirred at a touch to flail deliriously at four am, he now offered no response to Erik’s hand on his shoulder.

“Charles…wake up, Charles. Come on.”

Erik spoke quietly at first, then louder, smoothing Charles’s hair back from his brow. “Charles. Come on. It’s morning.”

Charles made a closed-mouthed sort of incoherent mumble and remained sleeping.

Sighing, Erik carefully opened each of Charles’s eyelids with his fingers. Charles moved in what might have been an abortive attempt to roll away at that, but the brace held him still, and if he was waking, there was no real sign.

Erik eyed the plate of food on the chair behind him. He’d have trouble enough getting it down Charles at all, he suspected—no point letting it get cold. Resolute, he took the glass of water from the seat of the chair and tipped a little over Charles’s lips. Charles's tongue flickered out of his mouth to catch it, but there was no sign of waking. Erik sighed to himself and carefully tipped just a little water over his friend's brow.

Charles gave a small start and then, as the water trickled into the corners of his eyes, finally blinked awake.

“Unnhhyuhhh.”

The sound was low, hoarse, quiet and meaningless. Charles struggled briefly against the constriction of the brace, blinked three times, then firmly shut his eyes again.

“Wake up.”

Charles made a soft sort of grunt and ignored him.

Erik tipped some more water on his face.

Charles opened his eyes at once this time, glaring hazily. “Stop ‘t…”

“Wake up.”

Another wordless grunt.

“Charles.”

“Don’t…jus…sleep.”

His face was flushing red, his eyes barely open, his mouth set in a hard frown. Even without the brace and the gown, he would have looked closer to death than health.

Erik retrieved the food from the chair. “I’m taking you to the hospital, and I’d like you to eat first.”

“Can’t.” The word was barely enunciated, Charles’s lips barely moving.

“Yes, you can. I’m going to feed you. Open your eyes.”

“No, jus…let me sleep…” he opened his eyes a little wider with what looked like a strained effort. “Please.”

Erik ripped a small chunk from the warm bread, just heated, not toasted. Soft, easy to chew. “Hospital, Charles. Remember? Doctor Calker wants you at the hospital. You liked him.” _You like everyone_.

Charles had shut his eyes again.

Erik considered more water, but it hadn’t done much so far. Instead, he damned the whole bloody situation and pressed the little piece of bread against Charles’s lips. Charles opened his mouth reflexively, almost bit Erik’s fingers in closing it, spluttered clumsily before managing to swallow the bread then groaned weakly, tears appearing in the corners of his closed eyes.

Erik waited for him to finish swallowing properly. “Ready for more?”

Charles made a pitiful attempt at shaking his head. “Just—”

“I’m not letting you sleep. We are expected shortly at the hospital. Open your eyes and mouth or you’re going to end up choking.”

“Hurts…” The word was breathed out, less a whisper than a word escaping without will.

“I know. But we’re taking you to the hospital, and—”

“Just let me—”

Erik stopped Charles's mouth with another piece of bread—he clamped his lips obstinately shut for several moments but clearly lacked the energy to sustain his mulishness, giving in and even chewing the bread a few times before swallowing.

Erik tore off a slightly larger piece. They’d still be here at midday at this rate. “Come on, Charles. Wake up properly, now. You need to eat to stay healthy.”

“I’m not healthy.” He groaned the words with eyes shut, but he opened his mouth when the bread touched his lips and ate it without argument.

“Good,” Erik offered, choosing to ignore the words in favour of the action. “Do you want to feed yourself?”

“Can’t move.”

Erik scanned Charles's body to be sure. The way the brace held him, both arms were available, and he should be able to move them. “You can move your arms and hands.”

“Hurts.” His eyes squeezed tighter shut at the word. The blood under the surface of his skin radiated heat—he was hotter by far than Erik’s skin. Erik was less confident in doing anything about it himself than he was in Charles’s ability to survive it until they got to the hospital.

He fed Charles another piece of bread, watched him swallow.

“Relax,” he tried, as he scooped some egg onto the next piece. “You’re tense all over. It’s probably making the pain worse.”

Charles breathed out heavily, breathed in half way then cut off abruptly, panted a few quick breaths. “It doesn’t hurt if I sleep.”

Erik looked only at the food and willed patience. “It won’t heal if you only sleep, either. Come on. Eggs and butter and fairly fresh bread. It’s good.”

At five minutes past ten, Charles had eaten a little over half of the food and drunk all the water, too thirsty to refuse it but sobbing quietly at the pain of swallowing.

Erik felt ill, and ignored it.

At ten minutes past ten, he let Mystique in from the hall where she’d been waiting ten minutes.

He left her in charge of keeping Charles awake, found the others ready and waiting in the lounge.

They couldn’t teleport the bed, and picking Charles up was awkward with the unwieldy, cumbersome frame around his body. It was all cries of pain and sobs and incoherent sounds and Raven sobbing too and pretending not to and guilt and worry and he shouldn’t be moved, of course, but what choice did Erik have, and by the time they all materialised in a silent, near-empty room on another continent, Erik felt ready to give up the whole damned thing.

Behind a curtain, a human-shaped shadow spoke with Dr. Calker’s voice. “I was right.”

Erik scanned the room quickly for windows, second entries, then pulled the curtain aside by its metal rings. The doctor was standing carefully still, hands extended a little as if to balance himself. “I was right. You just—appear. You ‘teleport’.”

“Riptide.” Erik motioned with his head toward the other side of the room. Charles’s body, back held straight with metal and strapped with heavy leather, was not an easy weight in his arms. Riptide and Mystique passed the doctor without comment, rounded the machinery by which he stood and searched the other side of the room carefully.

Erik turned his attention to Calker while they opened cupboards and checked under benches. “We do,” he allowed, and didn’t tell the doctor that only Azazel possessed that ability. “And so you will understand that any trap you lay we will subvert and any attempt you make to track us will fail.”

“I haven’t—” the doctor blurted, then, “I wouldn’t,” he corrected himself, visibly reigning his manner back to calm. “I have no intention of acting against you. I know what you hold over me, and I trust that if I cooperate then I will not regret it.” His voice still quivered.

Erik smiled coolly, considered a dozen responses, and settled for “Good.” No need to praise the man, or to threaten him further.

Beyond the x-ray machine, the tail ends of a search were still underway, but it appeared that Calker had kept his word, at least for now.

“You should lay the patient down.” There was hesitance in the doctor's voice, but also the steady professionalism of a man not working his first atypical situation. Calker had almost certainly been an army doctor, Erik thought, definitely in _the_ war, perhaps in the ‘Great War’ as well.

Erik didn’t bother replying as he walked carefully to the padded table. They’d teleported right from Charles’s bedside to minimise the necessary movement. Now he walked step by step, rolling his feet along the ground. It was a silent way of walking, and now it served to minimise the jostling of his burden. Charles was near to unconscious, Erik thought—he was awake, opening and closing his eyes and sounding small, wordless expressions of pain, but if he was lucid it wasn’t obvious.

The doctor hovered and fretted as Erik laid Charles down, directing every motion and making tiny adjustments to the angle at which Erik laid the body. _Never too late to divert one of the curtain frames through his chest_ , Erik reflected dully, with no real intention to do it.

Eventually, though, Charles was on the bench and out of Erik’s arms. He breathed with a wheeze and groaned almost inaudibly.

The doctor indicated with a slight push that Erik should step away—Erik ignored the command. “Tell me precisely what you will do.”

Calker did not look away from his patient. “I will x-ray him, Mr. Magneto.” The annoyance in his voice was carefully cloaked, the sarcasm almost imperceptible, but Erik did not doubt that it was there. He ignored the odd sound of his new 'name'. “Are you familiar with the x-ray?”

“Very,” Erik answered flatly. “Perhaps I should make myself more clear. If you do something unexpected, I will kill you at once rather than risk injury being done to one of my men.” It was probably pointless to pretend that Charles was not a person he particularly cared for, but he would not emphasise the fact. “It would be in your best interest to tell me precisely what you intend to do.”

The doctor stood still another moment, and Erik was sure there was a tremor to his hand as he smoothed it along one of the bars of the brace. When he turned, though, it was without haste, his face carefully composed. “As you know, my colleagues and I specialise in spinal injuries. Our x-ray suites are designed for spinal x-ray. I will need to fit Charles with a slightly more substantial brace. Then I need only fix the brace into the support frame,” one-handed, the doctor indicated a metal structure on wheels, currently pushed innocuously against a wall, “and place it under the x-ray machine.” The doctor gestured to the largest piece of machinery in the room, a towering thing with no clear openings. Erik had seen x-ray machines before, many times. They were harmless enough. “The machine will send x-ray photons toward Charles,” the doctor continued, “in the same way that a torch sends light. The photons will travel through Charles and leave an image of his bones on a large film, housed within the frame.” He indicated again toward the metal thing by the wall. “Does that meet with your approval?”

Erik didn’t look away from the man’s face. “No injections? No drugs? No power supply to the frame?”

The doctor’s eyes widened at the last, and Erik concealed his satisfaction without much concern. “Doctor?”

Calker held his gaze longer than most men would, but he did look away, glancing across to the two halves of the x-ray apparatus before taking a bracing breath in and confirming, “None of the above. I assure you, Mr. Magneto, I intend to treat Charles as I treat every one of my patients. I am a doctor.” There was pride in the words, and self-righteousness, and a touch of self-importance. “I took an oath to do no harm. I heal men. I do not hurt them further.”

Erik made himself wait, made himself watch and breathe until he was sure his voice would be flat, cool, untouched by the weakness that was undirected rage. Then, “Oaths are things to be broken,” he informed the doctor, and resisted the second half of that truth— _and doctors have done all the harm in the world._

***

For Charles, the x-ray was pain ripping raggedly through the morphine as the doctor refitted the brace, a wash of unconsciousness, or semi-consciousness, or—strapped down, unmoving, unmoving, unmoving, and hot coals at his back then a brand through his forehead and his back and his head and his back and his head, dizzying—then loud noise, buzzing, grinding, low noise, vibration, thick, impenetrable noise, noise, and a lot of lead nearby, lead through which thoughts travel poorly, but he could feel Raven worrying, and he remembered this, Raven worrying and the x-ray had said his leg was broken…but he’d been a child, then, and he wasn’t a child, not anymore. Was he?

For Erik, the x-ray was pressing his blunt fingernails one by one, one at a time into his palm as Calker manoeuvred Charles into another brace, more complex, more awkward—the doctor muttered about usually having a nurse to help and then tried to refuse Mystique’s assistance. He changed his tune readily enough with a neat little makeshift spike of steel floating dangerously close to his right eye, but muttered incoherently every time Mystique’s milky human skin brushed against him.

It was a hard, burning point of concentration for Erik, a single hot coal burning in the front of his skull, the absolute focus required to keep his powers reined in. Metal strained to respond to him when he was like this, emotion close to the surface, and with no focus it would warp freely, Charles’s brace and the x-ray machine and the hundred, thousand other metal objects within reach. He held between his fingers the little spike he’d drawn from the far steel bench, focused on shaping it slowly, finely, a drawn out coil over one finger and under the other, then an infinity knot, geometric and complex, then a tree, the dogwood outside Charles’s bedroom window in Westchester, blossoming on his palm. He pulled the steel into upturned branches, then smaller offshoots, then tiny, knarled twigs; a thousand tiny leaves, each one curving smoothly to a concave point, veins like the shape of church windows and a slightly rough edge; then clusters of flowers, each bloom stemming from its own little twig-end, four petals, a crooked little bite out of the round of each, soft looking lines from centre to gently curled rim, and the centre pebbled with its little seeds. It was probably the finest work he’d ever done. Rage and serenity indeed. Charles would like it.

For John Calker, the x-ray was hope and terror and the absurd little comfort of routine. Perhaps, despite the sheer unlikelihood his examination thus far overwhelmingly suggested, the break in the spine would be incomplete. There’d be a good chance, then, that he could get this man walking again, if not so easily as he had before his injury; and if he could get the man walking again then perhaps, surely, these people would be grateful enough to let him go. More likely, ‘Charles’, whomever he was, would never walk again, would have to relearn all the little basic things, climbing into bed, using the bathroom, moving from one place to another. The location of the injury meant that his breathing would be fine, and by the standards of Dr. Calker’s day to day work, it would be a relatively straightforward recovery. There was a well-established program for the rehabilitation of such patients, and here at Kessler’s it would be day by day, step by step, certain and well-supported. How he would manage it in this case, unsupported, in some base for some crazy gang or drug cartel or whatever in god's name they were, he had no idea.

More than anything, for John Calker, the x-ray was fervent prayer that Charles not need surgery. It was not likely that prayer would be answered. It was not really a possibility. But surgery always came with risks, and Calker was an intelligent man. Risks to his patient meant, in this case, risks to his family, to his life. The x-ray was an inevitable countdown to what came after, to the least simple part of treatment, and he worked toward it with dread.

When the film was done, the x-ray was a confirmation. Complete injury at lumbar vertebra 3. Spinal canal clear of foreign objects. Two large and multiple smaller bone fragments visible.

Surgery required to remove bone fragments and stabilise spine.

Prognosis: no recovery of sensory or motor function below L3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the commenters who have pointed out medical bits and pieces I've missed! I've made a few little changes to next chapter and it'll all make sense soon enough, I promise XD I'm writing this part of the story as I go, heading for the later scenes I wrote first, so do let me know if I've missed horrible errors in editing :) Really appreciate everyone who's read this far <3 Do drop me a line about how you want to hug Erik and/or beat him over the head ;) Final Harry Potter movie tonight! Much excitement :D


	10. Chapter 10

L3 was, Doctor Calker explained, a lucky miss compared to say L1, or T12, T10. Just a few inches higher and the bullet might have taken the abdominal muscles as well as the legs and hips, ruined Charles’s balance, made it much harder to adapt. Another few inches above that and breathing might have become an issue.

The completeness of the break, Doctor Calker explained, was still not certain. The shattered L3 vertebra was in pieces, and that obscured the lesion. The injury was very swollen, and would be for some time, and that could mask important elements in the x-ray image. The spinal cord itself was not clearly visible on this sort of image, and the less established procedures practised at the institute could not be performed without notice or record or interference. Spinal shock could last for weeks, and that could make clinical indicators inaccurate. Shock and swelling could be responsible for some of the lost sensation, for some of the lost muscle control.

Surgery, Doctor Calker explained, was absolutely necessary. The bone fragments sitting detached from their fellows in the vertebral canal could do further damage if not removed. The break in the spine would go on causing excruciating pain and further damage until set. Spinal fusion was essential. The lumbar spine would have to be permanently stabilised. A combination of instrumentation and fusion would fix the gap where the vertebra had been shattered. Without surgery, only months of complete stillness would limit further injury, and such prolonged stillness would do its own damage, psychological as well as physical.

The anatomy of the spine, Erik reflected, seemed far more fragile when applied to a friend.

***

“He hasn’t eaten in the past twelve hours?”

Erik frowned. “Not much. A piece of bread and an egg at breakfast. A decent amount of water.”

For a moment the doctor just stared, then shook his head rapidly, pressed two knuckles hard to the centre of his forehead. “The surgery will have to wait.”

“You just told me that it’s essential.”

“And it is.” Calker gritted his teeth in frustration, then visibly willed himself to calm. “I won’t operate until he’s fasted, though. It’s too dangerous.”

Erik’s frown deepened. “I’ve seen scores of men go into surgery with food in their stomachs.”

“In the field?” Erik didn’t respond. The doctor took it for confirmation. “The risks necessary in war are reckless in a state-of-the-art facility. When did he last eat? Or drink?”

“Around ten,” Raven offered, as Erik searched the doctor’s face for a lie.

Calker looked fleetingly annoyed, but nodded. “Tomorrow, then. His stomach won’t be empty until tonight, and I can’t operate unnoticed in the middle of the night.”

“We aren’t coming back here tomorrow,” Erik contradicted, flat—factual.

The doctor took a very small step forward. “If I agreed to operate now, Mr. Magneto, your friend could disgorge the contents of his stomach while under anaesthesia, breathe in the regurgitation and end up with severely damaged lungs. Infection, ongoing illness and death would all be possible outcomes. I have already told you once that I took an oath to heal men. Do not think that I will be bullied into unnecessarily risking a man’s life.”

Erik had no doubt that the doctor could be bullied into risking Charles’s life, or indeed almost anyone else’s. With his granddaughters hostage, Erik suspected that the man could be bullied into doing almost anything. The point was, of course, moot—risking Charles’s life was hardly an option.

Erik very briefly, very swiftly considered what options he did have. “Then you will find a way to complete the surgery elsewhere.”

Calker’s eyes went comically wide. “I’ve already—the room must be sterile, the instruments must be sterile—”

“And if I find you a sterile room?”

The doctor’s protests fell away like a severed snake. He stared a moment—wary. “With a sterile room and the appropriate instruments, I can conduct the surgery.”

And Erik was certain, beyond a shade of doubt, that Shaw possessed sterile rooms. He’d spent most of his teenage years in and out of them. Not in Argentina, perhaps, but the whole network was his now. He smiled thinly. “Good.”

***

There was a hot, sharp point of iron pressing its way slowly but surely through Charles’s skull.

Charles saw blackness and heard blackness and knew his vocal chords were as helplessly still as his legs and his chest and everything else. He’d tried moving all of them in countless different ways, and whatever was stilling him was doing its job completely.

So he’d waited, and kept calm, and listened furiously, and been certain that Erik would come get him out of trouble. They’d done it for each other in a thousand small ways across the continental US, and it had been what had brought them together in the first place, Charles hauling Erik from the water. They didn’t always agree, but they fit together, and they saved each other from all the things that didn’t work when they were alone.

And now Erik was here, hand wrapped around something like a soldering iron, the tight grip of his huge palm, the callus of his long fingers.

Charles saw blackness and heard blackness and knew that his vocal chords were snapping under pressure even if they were still, and Erik kept on pushing, slow and steady, careful purpose, ever sure. There was no malice, Charles knew that, not for him, just Erik’s focus seeing right through him. Charles couldn't move, and Erik wouldn't stop, and the long hot iron bored its steady way under his guidance, scorching then melting Charles’s skin, burning away bone, pressing toward the end.

***

Charles travelled back to Argentina in the frame from the x-ray suite, strapped in tight, back braced into the imitation of health. Dr. Calker objected half-heartedly to the theft of institute property, but it was both more functional than a table in terms of bracing and somewhat lighter, making it safer and easier for Azazel to teleport. The only objections in which Erik was interested were those directly relating to Charles’s health, and so the metal frame accompanied Charles back to the base outside Villa Gesell.

Dr. Calker did not accompany his patient. Erik himself could not quite believe he was allowing the man to remain embedded in his normal life, unmonitored, free to go running to their enemies at any time, but he had no one suitable to assign to surveillance, and he had promised Charles the doctor's freedom. That in itself would not necessarily have held him, though Erik was a man of his word insofar as he almost never gave it, but Charles would wake up at some point, and would read Calker’s thoughts, and Erik was determined in the long term to win Charles over. So long as Calker continued to keep _his_ word, then, it served Erik’s interests for the doctor to remain free.

And so Charles was wheeled by Raven back to his bedroom, out of the way of noise and chaos, and Angel was sent up the North hall to check on the prisoners, and Riptide and Azazel were set to locating a suitable facility—sterile, secure, not on record as belonging to Shaw, not too obviously a torture chamber.

Which left Erik alone in the lounge.

Erik had always been alone—at least, he had been alone for nearly fourteen years, and liked to consider himself as having been alone for five years before that. He had been alone for all the time that mattered, and that he had become so quickly unused to it was unnerving and a little ridiculous.

It was Charles, of course—Charles was ridiculous and unnerving and illogical and powerful and idiotic, and it all would be so much more simple were Charles not a factor. Which didn’t make that what Erik wanted.

He sat down slowly on the luxuriously upholstered cushion of a well-stuffed armchair, slightly uncomfortable with the prospect of being relatively idle in a room without a locked door. The seat looked and felt expensive, but was not what Erik found comfortable. The suit he wore was well made and Riptide had chosen the fit well on very short notice, but it was not what Erik would have chosen to wear.

He was reservedly glad of Charles, despite all his attendant problems—being alone was something Erik had adjusted to and accepted, not something he found desirable. Charles was all the things Erik had childishly believed he’d find in Israel when he’d escaped Shaw at nineteen, all the things he hadn’t found because he wasn’t human and he didn’t belong. Charles was what he’d resigned himself to never finding, the peace and the belonging that he’d given up on utterly eight years ago, when three countries and countless cities and towns had offered him nothing and he’d turned to hunting Shaw, decided to go after him in earnest.

And he’d found him, and he’d killed him, and that was still strange—that would take time to understand, he knew, that he hadn’t just dealt justice to another monster met along the way, or come close again to his target—he’d done it, and Shaw was dead. And now…now he was free to try to build something. He’d been a child to think he’d find it in Israel, and he’d sought only some approximation of it in Germany and then Poland, never really expecting to find it. Building it himself had never been an option—he’d been alone, and the core of a home, of a place for peace was belonging. Belonging to oneself hardly needed a dedicated space. Now, though…he wasn’t alone, not anymore. With Charles he’d found peace and belonging and God help him, love, and he could see the outlines of something bigger, of the things he’d sought before. There could be a home for mutants, a place to belong and be unafraid, to be proud and powerful and free. Not a home in the sense of a house, even a house as obscenely large as Charles’s, but rather a homeland, a nation, a people, a space, a thing, a home where all of mutantkind could come together and establish itself as the superior form of life.

A place where belonging would not be something he had to cradle and protect between fragile bodies, but something encompassing and invulnerable.

It would not be an easy thing to do, of course—humanity as a rule despised difference, and such a homeland would certainly face immense resistance in its formation, and come under overwhelming attack once formed. But mutantkind was powerful, more powerful than their forebears, than the less-evolved species, and just as Erik had survived all these years, so would his people, in their home.

He knew it now, knew the belonging that he’d been missing all his adult life, and that made him ready. He had the things he needed to begin to forge them a new world. He would take what Charles had given him, and make of it a future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being a day (and a half) late! Thanks to everyone for reading and for the feedback, especially to those who've left comments and helped me improve the story :) <3 I'm writing as I post through this part, so it takes a little longer than posting pre-drafted chapters, but I'll have the next one late Friday or early Saturday :) (i.e. 48 hours or so ;D) Please keep on letting me know if something doesn't seem quite right, or if there's anything you really like :D


	11. Chapter 11

It was, in the end, one of the longest and most unpleasant days of Erik’s adult life.

It was late afternoon by the time they fetched the doctor. They teleported into a tidy, elegant but plainly furnished hall that could have been anywhere; there were no windows. Erik knew that they were in Australia, which was—well, a logical place for an off-the-map base, he supposed, but nonetheless a little bizarre. He’d passed through most parts of the world, and this was not one of them. Where in the country he hadn’t bothered to ask, as it would have meaningless to him anyway.

He followed Azazel down the hall, Riptide following the doctor behind them, and they stepped through an unmarked door to find a comfortable office, a large wooden desk, gilded details, a leather-upholstered seat, and a plate glass wall sectioning off a white room.

It was very...silent.

There were metal implements in the neatly-ordered racks on the walls, alongside plastic ones, and that was a difference—by the time Erik had left at nineteen it had been all plastic and wood in the room he’d known in Germany. When he’d first known it, when his mother had murmured him wishes and fallen to the floor outside it, it had been all metal.

Erik passed Azazel slowly, waited until he reached the door to sever its bolt and push it open.

It was very clean. The room he’d known had always been very clean—it had been kept sterile. Shaw had wanted to hurt him, to train him, not to risk him. The injuries he dealt were made to heal well.

Erik stood four steps inside the doorway, ran his eyes carefully over the room and breathed.

“This looks fine.”

He had to focus a moment and swallow once before he could place the speaker and then place himself enough to turn sharply and face the man.

“You can conduct Charles’s surgery here tonight, then?”

The doctor was eyeing one of the racks on the wall. Erik was well aware that the room’s stock of instruments overlapped only in some places with the usual contents of a surgical suite. He knew each of the implements the doctor was making faces at, and he was confident that he could open the right drawer to find long, thick needles of different sizes; the mass of long cords and little pieces that produced electric shocks, and that had been removed from the room he’d known when he’d become too competent for metal to be used against him; scalpels, sharp and sterile, piled neatly one atop the other, side by side, sheathed in paper in the top draw of the second column toward the door from the end of the table. The scalpels and the needles had been replaced by innovations of Shaw’s commission, free of metal and similarly effective, in the room that Erik had known. Here, he thought, they would be metal—the only plastic implements he saw in the room were those that Shaw had liked best fourteen years ago.

The doctor was talking. Erik cursed his own weakness, considered a moment and decided on cold, hard, a question that would be read as a threat, perhaps a contradiction, rather than a query—better not to let the doctor imagine that his attention ever wandered. “What did you say?”

Calker stopped short. “I—you agreed, Mr. Magneto, this morning, that equipment would have to be brought in order to facilitate—”

“And it will be.”

The doctor appeared to flounder. Perhaps that was all he’d been talking about. Stupid, prattling man. Erik was ready to leave the ugly room, to go back to Argentina, ready himself to let Charles be brought here, when the man spoke again.

“You can’t mean…I cannot perform spinal surgery unassisted. It would be—deeply unadvisable.”

Erik stared in faint disbelief. He felt very, very tired.

The doctor rubbed nervously at the seam of his jacket pocket. “It’s as I explained a moment ago, Mr. Magneto—I will need at the least a surgical assistant and a nurse.”

Erik swallowed the urge to scare the man into submission.

Calker’s voice was shaky. “I want this finished as quickly and quietly as possible, just as you do, but I also want to ensure that Charles comes through the operation safely and with—”

“Don’t pretend to care about Charles,” Erik cut him off flatly. It wasn’t angry, just bored. Bitter, perhaps, just a little. “Azazel will take you. Bring back what you need. Assistants, nurses, equipment. Do it quietly and sensibly and without phone calls or treachery and I might still see fit to let you live.” He walked past the doctor toward the door.

“But I—”

Erik stopped, though he didn’t turn around.

John Calker’s voice was definitely trembling now. Probably his body too. “I can’t just—I’m sure there are…wherever we are, I’m sure there are…appropriate services…we could hire…”

He trailed off. Erik waited.

“I—I can’t—kidnap—”

“I am losing patience with you, Herr Doktor.”

There was an odd choked sound from behind Erik’s back. “I…perhaps I can—I’ll consider.” Calker’s words were weak. “Perhaps I can—I’ve performed this surgery many times.” His breathing was shallow. “I might be able to—yes, I—I can do it without—”

“Do not finish that sentence ‘without assistance’,” Erik warned.

The doctor was silent.

Erik turned to face him. “If that was the intended end of your sentence, then perhaps you do not adequately understand the importance to your granddaughters of your professionalism and success in this.”

No response. The man looked stricken.

“You have told me that in order to conduct the surgery safely, you need at least a surgical assistant and a nurse. You will have a surgical assistant and two nurses, and whatever equipment you require. Azazel will help you to bring them, and you will cooperate. You will choose the most competent, sensible people known to you, and if I have any reason to believe that you have not, then I will see you hurt. Do we understand each other, doctor?”

A stiff nod.

The muted clack Erik's heel made on the white tile was unnervingly familiar. Azazel followed him out of the semi-room, Riptide manhandling the doctor after them, closing the glass door in its metal frame.

The click of it locking into place sounded exactly as it had in the room he had known, and he placed his hand on Azazel’s shoulder to disappear without a backward glance.

***

Everything was difficult.

The surgical assistant and the nurses had to be individually intimidated. Their families had to be found and held in threat. They were angry at Calker and didn’t want to work with him. One was hysterical. Calker was distracted. Charles woke up and was distressed by it all and had to be given more morphine. Mystique was worried and unhelpful. It seemed increasingly likely that Charles was unconsciously projecting distress, though weakly.

Some time shortly prior to midnight, Erik gave up and sent all four of the increasingly hysterical doctors and nurses to Australia with Riptide to watch over them, and firm instructions that they get some sleep.

He sent Raven and Angel and, when he returned, Azazel to their own quarters as well. Rest, perhaps, would make everyone more settled. Rest, perhaps, would make this mess proceed more sanely in the morning.

Erik sat alone by Charles’s bed then, glad of the solitude, hoping tiredly that whatever unrest Charles was projecting would have less effect on Mystique when she wasn’t by his bedside. He had adjusted to tolerating Charles and then, in limited doses, the younger mutants; looking after a weepy girl who should be a strong woman was well outside that zone of tolerance. Charles did that. If only he were awake and well.

Clinically, methodically, Erik stroked two fingers over Charles’s temples, his cheekbones, his jaw, around to what he could reach of the nape of his neck, then the soft of his elbows, his wrists, his fingers, and then back again, calming, soothing. Perhaps it would do nothing, but Erik wasn’t sleeping, so he might as well. Perhaps it would ease Charles, somewhere in the haze of morphine keeping him quiet and still.

***

In the deep dark of morphine that was not truly sleep, darkness faded, and Charles blinked wearily at the first sun filtering through cracks where the curtains weren’t properly shut. His bed was warm and comfortable and soft and curled around him in the way blankets always are when you first wake in the morning, and the stray shards of light were mildly annoying but not enough to pull his warm, lax feet down to cold floorboards.

It took that long for Charles to process that it was not the sun that had woken him. Beside him, blanket mostly pushed off, sheets barely masking the lines of his body, Erik was awake, warm and large and solid and entirely nonsensically familiar. The pads of two of his fingers smoothed over Charles's collarbones, down until they reached the blankets then down his arm instead, the sensitive part of his elbow, the thin skin of his forearm, his wrist. Charles blinked his eyes properly open.

Erik smiled wanly. “You were restless.”

Charles blinked uncomprehendingly for several seconds, then squeezed his eyes shut, sighed deeply, and pressed himself more deeply into the blankets, winding his own fingers into Erik’s. “Dreaming, I suppose.”

“Bad dreams?”

Charles shrugged, an awkward and ineffective motion with his shoulders now very much buried. “I don’t remember. Sorry if I woke you.”

“I was awake.” Erik pushed himself one-handed to sit, sheet falling to his waist. “We should get up, anyway.”

Charles glared through wrinkled slits of eyes, resentment only part feigned. “It’s—what—” he floundered momentarily for some idea of the time before hedging, “—early.”

Erik scoffed laughter, a deep rumble that Charles felt through his skin. “It’s just past seven.”

And details faded hazy and sharp, in and out, the ebb and the flow and slivers of light between the curtains, shivering. There was warmth and Erik’s patience and scepticism and wonder, and two kisses before breakfast and laughter, the children laughing, Raven and Alex and Sean and even Hank, awkwardly, and Erik smiling, and sunlight, and promise, and the pads of fingers and promise and brilliance.

***

Erik stroked his fingers carefully, easily, methodically over Charles’s skin, quieting, gentle, half-dozing himself, and around him the compound settled softly into peaceful sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idek, it is so good to be writing fic again, even though it is eating all of my time :P Thank you so much to everyone who is reading :) Next chapter...I'll try for the end of the weekend. 2 days seems to be working okay! Comments are love <3 Thanks in particular to Little D and furius for their ideas and criticisms and medical notes, they are very much appreciated <3


	12. Chapter 12

Morning came, as morning does.

Morning was marked by the wordless cry of a disoriented telepath in pain.

For most of the compound’s inhabitants—sixty-seven _homo sapiens_ and three _homo superior_ —wakefulness came in a burst of panic, a ripple of fear and hurt and confusion that jolted them from sleep and left them gasping.

For Erik, it was only the noise—first Charles’s cry, then the rattle of metal as he struggled against his brace.

Erik woke stiffly, though not slowly—Erik had long since lost the ability to wake slowly, blinkingly, childishly. This morning, he woke at the first cry but was put immediately at ease. There was a mattress beneath his head, and the shoulder blocking most of his line of sight belonged to Charles. It had probably been a nightmare that woke him. Nothing unusual. He shut his eyes again, and would have reached for sleep had not the rattling begun.

He reopened his eyes. Metal. Oh.

Reality is a cruel start to the day.

Erik sat up, stretched his back. It ached nastily. He could feel the creases of the sheet imprinted in one cheek, and the sharper, more stinging indent of the helmet. The impulse to pull it off was almost overwhelming. He resisted.

On the bed, Charles lay where he’d been unloaded from the x-ray frame a day ago—no, not quite. They’d turned him onto his other side, at the same time as Riptide had telephoned to say he needed Azazel again. Calker wanted an anaesthetist as well. Azazel had gone, and Mystique and Angel had helped him turn Charles onto his other side. Must avoid pressure sores.

The brace was a marvellous, masterful thing, and Charles’s hysterical efforts against it were having no success. Charles was safe, for now. Safe, but distressed.

Faintly aware that his thought processes were disturbingly viscous this morning, Erik squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, rolled his shoulders once more and reached for Charles’s head. Two fingers at his temple. The quickest way to his attention. “Charles.”

Charles was breathing fast. He looked around wildly, eyes perhaps lighting briefly on Erik, but didn’t respond.

Erik dropped stiffly to his knees by the bed. “Look at me. Charles, it’s me. It’s Erik. Be calm.”

Another, softer cry, then the rattling of the brace weakened and finally ceased as Charles stilled. Erik held his touch, continued trying to meet Charles’s eyes. He suspected that the stillness was a sudden reluctance on Charles's part to cause himself further pain rather than a sudden recognition of Erik.

A keening sound, low and reedy, nothing like Charles. Erik took a calming breath and raised his other hand to Charles’s face, carefully turned Charles to face him, so far as the brace would allow. Charles stared through him, glassy-eyed.

“Charles Xavier.” Erik shuffled a little closer on his knees. Even they felt stiff. He should know better than to fall asleep in a chair, let alone practically doubled over in one. He tried again. “Professor Charles Xavier.”

Another keening whine, closed-lipped, higher-pitched than the last. Charles’s gaze was not on the present.

Erik sighed minutely, readjusted his gentle grip on Charles’s head, and leaned in to press his lips across his friend’s. No response—welcome or rejection. He kissed Charles a second time, a little more firmly—coaxing, almost—then drew back a few inches. “Charles?”

Charles looked…confused. A step up from absent, Erik supposed wryly.

“Nnh…mmmgh?”

The corners of Erik’s lips twitched despite him. He shifted his hands, held Charles’s eyelids open artlessly with his thumbs. “Wake up, Charles.”

Charles’s mouth opened and closed once, lips red and swollen—he’d probably been biting them. His eyelids twitched against Erik’s fingers, probably trying to blink. His eyes focused and unfocused and refocused hazily. Then—“…Erik?”

His voice sounded sandpapered. Erik almost retreated to get water before he remembered the doctor. Nothing to be in his stomach. It seemed unnecessarily cruel. Still, he remained kneeling by the bed. “Awake?”

Charles swallowed, a jerky movement of his Adam’s apple. Erik pushed a few mussed, sweaty curls of hair back from his brow. “Talk to me.”

Charles swallowed again. “…’m awake.”

Erik searched for anything useful to say to that. He was not accustomed to small talk, but he didn’t want Charles to go back to sleep. Nor did he want to leave Charles immediately, fetch Mystique and ship Charles off to surgery. In truth, he didn’t want to ship Charles off to surgery at all, but he’d already accepted the necessity, made the preparations—surely it was as well to get it done with. Yet Charles had woken screaming, and…and apparently that was something he cared about.

“Bad dreams?” he managed. It was a stupid question, with an obvious answer.

Charles made an awkward attempt at a one-shouldered shrug, visible—he _could_ move his shoulders—but not obvious, with the current, massive brace stilling the entirety of his back.

“You’re having surgery today,” Erik tried instead.

Charles narrowed his eyes, familiar lines creasing his forehead, and Erik was ready for anything—the return of intelligent Charles and a thorough understanding of spinal injury, a complete lack of memory of yesterday and no awareness that he needed surgery, a sensible mistrust of the doctor and reluctance to be cut open by him—except perhaps for—

“…I’m hurt.”

Wonderful.

Well, Charles was heavily drugged. Erik searched vainly for an appropriate answer. No point giving him too much information when he might become stressed trying to grasp it. He should know something, though—surely he should know prior to the fact that Erik was having someone operate on his spine.

Charles saved him the decision. “My back hurts…everything…except my legs, I can’t feel my legs…so…” the slightest shift of his features, something like sadness, muted. “Oh…yes.” A weak huff of breath. “You…I was…and…God, it’s hard to remember…” with that tight frown and the creases by his eyes that appeared whenever he had to concentrate hard, and it was…Charles. It was just Charles, with a molasses smoke screen getting in the way of his thoughts.

Erik scrubbed his eyes quickly with the heels of his hands. Just Charles. “The doctor thinks your spinal cord’s completely severed. It’s the L3 vertebra, so your upper body’s fine but your legs aren’t. He needs to operate to stabilise your spine, and he’s doing it today. Is that alright?”

Charles gave himself the time to process it, and Erik let him. He could see the logic working itself out behind Charles’s eyes, pupils dilated in the dim room; he wasn’t dozing. He was probably trying to remember things, Erik guessed—Charles didn’t have training in medicine as such, not in the clinical sense, but did have training in anatomy, mountains of training in the science of the human body, and all of it would be less accessible than usual in his present state.

When Charles spoke again, his eyes were very wide, his breath shallow and very even. “I’m never going to walk again.”

For just one moment, it was horribly difficult to breathe. Erik made himself hold his friend’s gaze anyway. Charles deserved that, and a thousand other things and maybe one day, when the war was won, Erik might try to give him some of them. For now, there was honesty. “Probably not.”

The brace didn’t allow Charles his full range of motion at the neck, but he nodded a little, slowly. “I can’t…it’s so hard to think.”

“You’re on a morphine drip.”

Another wordless acknowledgement, a flick of the eyes that didn’t require Charles to move his head.

Erik glanced back toward the door, wishing the doctor were here to describe the procedure again, with Charles mostly conscious. There had to be a way to explain this that didn’t sound as though he were having metal rods installed in Charles’s body for some ulterior purpose, but none of them came to mind. Perhaps he was being paranoid. Regardless he was being a coward.

Behind him, someone knocked on the door. “Magneto?”

Mystique. Erik reached for the chair behind him, missed once before catching it, and pulled himself back up to sit. Stupid to bother, really. Still. He straightened, arched his back once, still stiff, and willed himself to wakefulness with his eyes still on Charles. The professor was drifting again, by his face. “Come in.”

She shut the door behind her before speaking, and was at the bedside before she finished a sentence. “Charles woke everyone up.”

It took several moments for Erik to catch on. “Projecting again?”

“Like last night,” Mystique concurred. “He hasn’t done it in years. Like, lots of years.”

Erik shrugged. “He’s drugged. And awake,” he noted, an afterthought.

She dropped immediately to her knees, smooth blue fingers reaching for her brother’s. “Charles?”

Charles opened his eyes unhurriedly, or perhaps with difficulty. It was hard to tell.

“Is he alright?”

Erik shrugged. Perhaps Charles would stay more conscious if he had to talk a bit.

Evidently Charles had expected Erik to answer—it took several moments for him to shift his gaze from Erik back to his sister—but he managed a weak smile when he got there. “Raven.”

Raven swallowed and looked immediately uncomfortable. “I’m—” she glanced self-consciously up at Erik. “We can’t use those names anymore, Charles. You have to call me Mystique. We’ll call you Professor, too. Things are different now.”

The smile fell away, like summer melting, but he didn’t argue. Erik tried not to feel tired already. He’d _had_ sleep, hadn’t he? “I was just about to explain to Charles what the surgery entails.”

Mystique looked caught between relieved and guilty. Erik ignored it. “Charles, are you still listening?”

Another laborious shift of attention, the tiny tilt of the face, the dizzy swing of the eyes. Charles swallowed again. “I can’t drink, can I?”

Trust Charles to know better than Erik even with a metric tonne of morphine crushing his skull. Erik shook his head at the same time as Mystique apologised, “After the surgery, Charles,” voice thick with regret.

Erik felt abruptly, irrationally annoyed. With every day that passed, Mystique became less like the almost-mature woman he’d managed to turn to reason and more like the childish girl they’d left behind with the other children when they’d gone to Russia. She’d recounted endlessly tales of Charles being injured before—mostly, it seemed to Erik, when they were both very young. She would, he hoped, come back to herself once Charles was stable. In the meantime, she was infuriating as everyone but Charles was infuriating, or—Charles was infuriating in a different way. With the rest of the world, with other people, with Mystique, at the moment, it was the small illogics, the facile, banal things that put his teeth on edge—she shouldn’t be apologising for a necessary condition of surgery for which there was no possible degree of blame on her. She was powerful and gifted and magnificent—she shouldn’t ever be apologising for anything.

All of which he could mull over later, or never.

Mystique was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the bed, head tipped sideways to watch Charles. He’d closed his eyes again.

Erik almost groaned. “Charles.”

The flutter of eyelashes for several seconds, but he did get them open.

“I want to explain to you what’s happening.”

Charles licked his lips. Still red. “Mm.” He sounded exhausted, as though he hadn’t been sleeping for most of the past three days.

Erik attempted to gather his focus; pushed all the breath from his lungs and drew it back in more slowly. This should be simple. Start at the beginning. “The doctor is going to go in through the existing wound. He’ll have to make it bigger, of course. You’ll be unconscious. He’ll put you under general anaesthetic. We’ve got a specialised anaesthetist to do that. He’s going to do something called spinal fusion using a bone graft, which you probably know more about than me. From my understanding it helps your bones to fuse together.” Probably a vast simplification, but that was fine. “He’s going to link some bones with wire as well, and use metal pieces to set things so they can’t move. It should all stop the part of your back that’s broken from moving and prevent any more damage. It won’t make your legs work but it should heal with time and stop hurting. Does that make sense?”

Charles licked his lips again. He breathed out slowly.

“Charles?”

A slow blink. “Oh, um.” Another breath out, and in. “Yes. Yes.” Another moment. “I know about…bone grafts…”

Erik allowed himself a small grimace. Perhaps Charles understood everything. Perhaps he understood nothing. Either way, Erik had tried. Mystique was watching his face now, instead of Charles’s, and that was almost as unnerving as Charles’s sloth.

No more deferring the inevitable. He stood. “We’re going to take you to the doctor now. Alright?”

Looking up at Erik from the bed required Charles’s eyes to roll disturbingly back into his skull. It made him look only marginally less present. His enunciation was poor. “I trust you.”

And didn’t that spell poor judgment. Still, that was affirmation more than anything. Charles’s poor judgment was nothing new. Charles’s poor judgment was the reason Erik was making his decisions now.

The mobile frame from the hospital came to his side with a flick of his fingers and a quiet rattle. “That again?”

Erik didn’t bother looking at Mystique, his eyes running critically instead over Charles. How best to load him into the thing? “I won’t float him in the brace, it doesn’t support enough of his body. I’d have to carry him by hand like I did yesterday morning. Safer to use this.”

She asked no further questions as he knelt by Charles’s bed, but offered, “Should I help?”

His instincts said no, but that was paranoia and possessiveness—Erik was more self-aware than to mistake that, and had more self-control than to give in to it. “Get under his legs.”

They lifted him together, on Erik’s count, Erik with one arm supporting his head and the other under the brace, Mystique supporting the dead mass of his legs. It was tempting to use the metal of the brace, make the process less awkward, but Erik had decided after the doctor’s first visit that he wouldn’t—he wasn’t confident of his fine control, not so confident that he’d risk doing further damage to Charles when he was this fragile. The frame was a different matter—so long as he applied force to the whole of it, made sure not to bend it out of shape, it would hold the whole of Charles safely. He could do that. He was used to that.

They were getting better at moving their invalid—they’d done it half a dozen times now—and they set him in the frame without incident. Erik floated it from the room an inch above the ground, a smoother run than wheeling it even on carpet. The drip machine floated easily by its side. The frame was surprisingly light, really—Charles was surprisingly light. Shorter than Erik, and less bulky—just a very little more fat but a lot less muscle. He’d barely eaten in three days, or maybe it was the pain, or maybe it was the morphine—his face looked wasted, and his wrists felt thin when Erik touched his pulse point. Maybe it was Erik’s imagination. Charles seemed...frail. Charles _was_ frail. Frail and fragile and broken.

Frail and fragile and broken, but still stronger than the billions of mindless, violent humans crawling over the face of the world with nothing but their skin and flesh and bones. Charles was more than that. Charles would be fine. Erik just had to keep him safe for now, and sure as hunger and cold and the earth turning, Charles would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait - this chapter and the next together were quite hard to write, and came out quite long! Suffice to say that Erik was being disagreeable :P Sorry that not so much happened this chapter; it was sort of necessary set up for the next, which I will try to post tomorrow :) Thank you for your patience with me (and Erik...)!
> 
> A massive thank you to everyone who's left kudos; it was really exciting to hit 100. Thanks especially to everyone who's commented, and special thanks again today to Little D for picking out my editing oversights for me - you are a lifesaver :) Comments of any and all kinds are very much appreciated - love to hear from you all!


	13. Chapter 13

They materialised in Shaw’s polished, empty office at 6:08am New York time, by Erik’s watch, though the time hardly mattered—day and night were meaningless things in these windowless spaces on opposite sides of the world. It was almost stranger materialising straight there than stepping in from the unfamiliar hall. This way it was like appearing in the echo of a nightmare, nothing to suggest that this was not Germany in 1949 or indeed early 1944. There were, of course, small things, if one looked for them—a more modern telephone, a dictation machine for recording audio cassettes, a large, boxy contraption in the corner that Erik thought was some kind of ‘computer’. It was a functional office, not a sentimental replica, though Erik would not have been surprised to find such a thing. Shaw was a madman.

The small changes did little to alleviate the sense of stepping into Hell. Charles had preceded him—Azazel could only teleport so much mass at once, and they had deemed it safest to send him with Charles in the frame alone—and strapped down, caged in, hurt and disoriented at the centre of the room, he was a purpling bruise on Erik’s separation between past and present.

Beyond the glass wall, his five captives moved purposefully but not without fear, glancing frequently as they set up the white room for the surgery to the mutants now gathered in the office. The abrupt urge to run, to take Charles and cover as much ground away from here as possible, was nauseating in its intensity.

 _Face it head on_ , he counselled himself. The only way to face anything.

He turned to face the door squarely, opened it from where he stood in the centre of the office, and floated Charles’s frame and drip ahead of him, one hand resting needlessly on the metal.

The doctors and nurses had startled at the door’s opening, and all but Calker shrunk away with little subtlety as Erik entered. He lowered Charles to the floor in the centre of the room, by the operating table and its glaring light and its metal stands full of things that would cut and twist and tear. It was the same padded bench, really, with a few small changes in the details, a slightly different light set to arch overhead. The basics were identical. Strategically positioned leather cuffs would slide in and around and tighten and lock there and there and there, neck and elbows and wrists and thighs and ankles. How would Charles lie, while they cut him open? A normal operating table didn’t have those sorts of restraints, Erik knew that from his brief stint as an orderly a decade ago, but perhaps since they were there anyway, the doctor would choose to use them? They weren’t so different from the straps holding Charles in his brace. Restraints to stop you struggling. Restraints to keep you steady as flesh parted. _Be very still, Erik_ , like a purr, like the whispering caress of a sharp blade, _Let’s see how still you can be. Perhaps if you’re very still today, I’ll give you a reward. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?_ But not a question, never a real question. _Still, now, it’s just a little pain. I wouldn’t want to hit anything important…_

Erik breathed heavily. Another time, another place, and Shaw was dead now. Charles’s eyes flickered open and shut again. Calker shifted uncomfortably beyond the padded bench. “Mr. Magneto?”

Abruptly, Erik knew he couldn’t do it. Not just now. Not just yet. He wished that Charles were more awake, more conscious. This was weakness, this was foolish, undeniable weakness, and Charles would be able to put it in its place for him, drag him back to logic. Of course, that would require the removal of the helmet, and that was no longer an option. Charles had taken away that option the moment he’d lunged for Erik’s mind on the beach.

He turned his attention to the doctor. “Leave the room.”

Calker’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry?”

“All of you, wait outside. Don’t give my men any trouble.”

The doctor hovered another moment, then shot meaningful looks around the room, meeting eyes and gesturing toward the door. “Of course, Mr. Magneto.”

“Just Magneto,” Erik corrected dully as the old man rounded the bench, passed by Charles and followed his unwilling recruits out into the office. “No ‘mister’. Just Magneto.”

“Ah, I—I see. Shall I…?” Erik turned to find him standing in the doorway, one hand on the handle. With barely a motion he shut it himself, not forcefully, and only smiled a little at the mild horror on John Calker’s face as the door swung closed without him pulling, his grasp on the handle pushing him back beyond the glass.

When Erik turned back, Charles’s eyes were open. He was smiling, almost, weakly, more a grimace than a true smile. Erik watched him in silence. It was the better part of half a minute before Charles spoke. “I know this place.”

“No, you don’t,” Erik denied pointlessly.

Charles was, as ever, implacable. “Why here? Surely Shaw has other rooms than that in which he tormented you.”

“I thought you were drugged into delirium?”

A flicker of laughter in the lips, the eyes, not enough to think of sounding. “Hazy, my friend, not delirious. Finding myself in the scene of your worst nightmares rather demands my attention.”

Erik sighed quietly and stepped a little to his left. He had his back to the glass, and he knew it was thick, soundproof, but he didn’t want anyone reading Charles’s lips. “It’s not the same room. We’re in Australia. Evidently he had several.”

Charles’s eyes widened a little, then half shut again. It took him a long time to formulate a reply, and even then it was not really sequential. “It’s so difficult to think.”

“Not surprising. There’s a lot of morphine in your system.” It was true, and in their present circumstances it didn’t rate as a significant worry. Erik glanced back at the office. All nine of its occupants were watching, though there was little for them to see. “Are you conscious enough to read the doctor’s intentions?”

Another faint grimace. “Doctor…Calker. Yes.” A small sigh, the sort that made Erik want to throttle him a little. “He has no wish to harm me, Erik. He’s a good man.”

“You’re sure? Not whether he’s a good man or an evil one, it makes no difference to me.” It was a given that Charles would interpret anything as goodness. Whether he was mistaken was irrelevant. “Are you sure that he intends to complete the surgery as he would for any other patient? Look properly.”

“Properly…”

Was that Charles thinking aloud? He did, occasionally, but usually to a rhetorical purpose, not for his own sake.

“What does that mean?”

Erik stared.

The faint smile slipped away from Charles’s lips. “What does it mean? Look properly?”

Erik cursed silently. “You’re not well enough to think, let alone to—”

“Erik.” Weak, but firmer than before. “You don’t know what it is to be in a man’s mind.”

Patience. “That’s true.” But not helpful. Should he give up on this? And what if the doctor was at this moment running through his mind a final time a plan to use Charles as hostage, some clever plastic tool poised to cut out what remained of his life? No, he had to make Charles focus. He had to be more sure than this. Then… “Focus, Charles.” Erik shut his eyes, opened them again. “Can you feel the doctor’s thoughts?”

The smile flickered back and away, moths' wings, or firelight. “You misunderstand me, my friend.”

Perhaps this was a bad idea. Perhaps they should go back to Argentina, wait, halve the morphine. Charles would be anaesthetised for the surgery anyway, surely he could bear some of the pain beforehand if it meant being sure the doctor would be true to his word—

“The doctor means me no harm. So far as I can tell, he will do what he can to…heal what he can.” Another quiet sigh. Tired. “What he can of me.” It was heavy, heavy with drug-haze that showed like exhaustion and heavy with a time of acceptance that Erik suspected would be gone again by the next time they spoke.

“So far as you can tell?” How far was that? Was it any further than Charles’s own foolish trust?

Firelight flicker, and the turn of lips. “You said ‘properly’. If I were to search for your intentions, Erik…I can guess at things I might find. You intend to do what you see as best."

Charles was out of breath by the end of the sentance, shallow panting that didn't press out against his ribs, didn't press back against his burned branch spine. He pushed through it before he'd taken in half of enough air. "You intend to look after me, in your way." Sunken eyes and sweat in his fringe and a bright flush on bone pale cheeks. "You intend to keep the doctors alive only so far as is needed to keep me pliant.”

What effort Erik made to suppress his kneejerk response to that was proved pointless by Charles’s smile, twisting back, sickly and wry and pain-tension-trying-to-stay-conscious tight. “I know you, my friend, even if I don’t know your thoughts at present." It was laughably apparent that he was fighting his body, weak syllables sickly and thin, the steel of his mind fluttering through in pathetic bursts. "But if I were to search ‘properly’ for your intentions, what would I make of what I found?" One, two, three seconds of tiny gasps, a drowning thing. "Where would I go to reconcile your thoughts to each other?”

Charles swallowed awkwardly, chokingly. He was not well enough for this. Erik should make him be quiet.

“I know you 'properly', Erik, because I know the corners of you," wheeze in, pant out, “the places I had to go and the places you let me go, the pockets you forget and the hidden doors and the shining places and all the layers on layers…and perhaps I still don’t know you ‘properly’, not really, because I can’t…” a sharper rasp to the breath in, a dizzy flicker of eyelids and lashes. “I don’t know what you’ll do.” Barely more than a whisper now. Weak. Erik should stop him. “So how…how can I…but…” a forceful blink, and Erik could imagine the way his world must be spinning, by the way his eyes had lost their focus now. “He means to heal me. I’m sure.” A toneless, thin breath sound, the failure to voice. “Trust, Erik…”

“Stop.” Hold to calm. "Stop, Charles. Breathe."

Erik didn’t _want_ him to stop talking. Was Charles telling him to trust—nothing new, and nothing meaning anything—or telling him _he_ trusted the doctor? And if it were that, was he reporting from the doctor’s mind, or simply repeating his helpless, dangerous trust of everything that ran at him?

But Charles was breathing heavily, dizzily, enough to make Erik nauseous and Charles must be, must feel like cold strips of flesh trembling apart, and…

Erik turned back to face the glass. They were all watching him. Not watching Erik, who couldn’t protect himself let alone anyone else, who couldn’t even avenge himself, who couldn’t even dream of peace beyond that, who was so trapped by this room that anything else was—no. They were all watching Magneto.

He reached out a hand, and the door swung open. Doctor Calker stepped up to the doorway—Erik saw his face change at the sound of Charles’s heavy breathing. No one else moved.

Erik stood his ground. “If you harm him, you will never leave this room.”

Calker nodded slowly. “That seems fair.”

By the looks on the faces of his assistants, they didn’t agree. Erik had to give the man some small credit. He understood his situation.

At Erik’s gesture, the doctor re-entered the room. Azazel gave one of the nurses a small shove—she squeaked stupidly and followed at some speed. The other three came with more dignity, but their faces read similar fear.

Erik closed the door behind them. “This room was built for torture. Had you guessed that?”

No one spoke, but the anaesthetist had tears in his eyes.

“Doctor Calker?”

Erik watched the doctor’s eyes, dark, caved in by skin, wrinkles encroaching—he scanned the walls again, brushed knowledge over closed drawers. He’d explored, then, while Erik had been gone. Finally—“I wondered.”

“Very good.” Erik offered him a sardonic smile. The doctor didn’t return it. Erik didn’t wait. “I’ll repeat, then. If any of you fails to do your job with consummate skill and with the expected outcome, then you all will remain in here permanently, and we shall explore the room's former purpose together.”

He didn’t wait for replies—he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t take Charles and leave if he let himself delay another moment. He turned to the ugly frame by the ugly table one more time. Charles's eyes were shut again, and perhaps he was gone once more. It didn’t really matter. Erik squatted where he stood to speak in his friend’s ear. “You made me keep living, Charles.” Low and fierce and all the things he knew, all the things they knew about each other. “Now it’s your turn.”

And he walked out before he could stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am broken. They have broken me. Stupid boys.
> 
> Next chapter day after tomorrow :) Thanks as always for reading, for kudos and especially for comments! <3


	14. Chapter 14

_O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,  
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men  
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart  
Dare the unpastur'd dragon in his den?_

 _Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene  
The actors or spectators? Great and mean  
Meet mass'd in death, who lends what life must borrow.  
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,  
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,  
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow._

***

The ill-fitting suit that Erik was still wearing had two pockets, and the greatcoat that Azazel had brought for him had four. One pocket held cigarettes, another a lighter. One trouser pocket held banknotes, by habit. The third pocket of the coat held a knife, should it be in easier reach than his belt. The fourth held a small tree wrought from steel; veined trunk and veined leaves and tiny dogwood blossoms that would not bloom on the real tree outside Charles’s window in Westchester until April or May.

Half an hour into the surgery, the little tree had slow, tiny pools of red in its miniature hollows, a steady leak from the sharp tips of twigs where they pressed through skin, sliding along silvery paths grown once in wood to collect water, a little patch of felted wool beneath the base of the trunk slowly staining stiff with Erik’s blood.

***

An hour into the surgery, Mystique returned from somewhere and set a hand on Erik’s arm. Erik hadn’t noticed her leave, but now she had brought things back: gauze and tape.

Erik refused her insistent desire to bandage his left hand. He didn’t want gauze everywhere if he had to kill someone with it.

***

The anaesthetist was sitting in the corner of the glass room. He stood and helped occasionally, presumably when asked; holding things, mainly. He had done his job, at the start, and he would do more when all else was over.

Two hours into the surgery, Erik debated opening the door and hauling the man out. He would have some idea of what was happening, surely. Erik had already violated Calker’s rules about the room more than once—he had done that when he’d first walked in, knowing the doctor had wanted no one in there unscrubbed, and he had done it again when he’d sent the lot of them out into the office, knowing Calker wanted the room and its unwilling little team as sterile as possible. Calker’s ‘rules’ were idiocy, Erik had no doubt about that. He’d seen medicine practised very effectively in far less cosseted conditions than these. Still, better not to distract any of them while they worked. Charles was in there.

***

Two and a half hours into the surgery, Erik dozed in his hard-backed seat.

“Push the blade away.”

Shaw’s voice was kind, patient. Generous. He cut a slow, shallow line down Erik’s chest, collarbone to hip.

A sharp flick—the cry was out before any thought—deeper, harder off the hipbone at the end, and— _oh, oh, no no no no_ —he’d cried out, made a sound as he knew he shouldn’t but— _pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain_ and then quicker than justice or fate the scalpel was at Erik’s bottom lip again, pressure, uncomfortable, hateful, and then more pressure, and then _pain_ , pain and the taste of blood, familiar as breathing, and Erik clenched his teeth over the sides of his tongue and begged his voice to die.

He stayed silent. He even managed to keep his tongue in his mouth this time, let the blood run back in itself and not worry it.

Shaw tapped the tip of the blade once on Erik's cheek, just a touch. “You did not push it away, Erik.” Rebuking. Patient and kind and disappointed. “Don’t make these silly noises, Erik, just push the blade away.”

Erik ignored the blood trickling into his mouth, and ignored the rubbing of the leather cuffs on his wrists and on his elbows and on his ankles and on his thighs and on his neck, and Shaw smiled, and began again.

***

Three hours into the surgery, Erik woke with blood in his mouth and a lacerated, tooth-marked tongue.

***

In the final hour of the surgery, Erik made plans, the sort of plans that should be his purview alone, separate to his soldiers—plans relating specifically to Charles.

It would be months, Calker had told him, roughly half a year, before Charles’s spine was properly fused, entirely stable again—ready for him to lead an active life, though wheelchair-bound. Erik could not wait that long. It was not a matter of his own patience; he had practised patience for years, though Charles did test him. It was simply a matter of logic: at present, he still held Charles technically against his will. It was only a technicality, Erik was confident in that; Charles had hardly been raging against him. Still, he might, as he healed, as the morphine was reduced and Charles came back to himself.

No, if Erik waited six months to bring Charles to his right place, his right mind, a realistic understanding of their situation, then he might well lose Charles for good. Six months was a long time to grow bitter, to let resistance solidify, if Charles did choose to remember that Erik had somewhat defied his wishes in bringing him here.

His options, then? Talking to Charles was unlikely to be productive. He had been talking to Charles since the day they’d met in the water, and for all they’d changed about each other as men, their talks had brought no shift in Charles’s elegantly-stated ideologies, no hint that Charles might be penetrated by words alone.

He was not willing to use violence against Charles. He was determined, in so far as situation allowed, not to use violence against his kind at all. He did not disagree with the fundamentals of Shaw’s plans for the future of their kind. What had been abhorrent—what had brought Shaw to his fall at Erik’s hands—had been his methods, his screwing of the knife into the heart and the flesh of his own kind. Erik would not shrink from defending himself, nor from defending his plans, but as long as he was not attacked by mutants, he would not strike one again. And certainly not Charles. Charles was…not made for that. Besides, Erik reflected with what he knew was foolish pride in his friend, violence would probably do little to sway Charles—he had been so little shaped by what violence he had known in his odd childhood that Erik suspected no mark left on Charles by physical pain would mar his determined naivety in the face of man’s cruelty.

Charles _had_ been shaped by what he saw in men’s minds. It had taken Erik time to understand that, because it was less straightforward than it sounded. He had been bewildered, in the first month or so of knowing Charles, by the apparent disconnect between his gift and his nature. That a man who saw the darkest corners of thought and desire, the aspects of being that all men and women hide from their fellows, perhaps from themselves, could be so trusting…it was irreconcilable.

Only weeks of close company and blunt questioning had yielded Erik, eventually, the truth. Charles was not unchanged by his gift; he simply used it in such a fiercely optimistic manner that it affected him in unexpected ways. Charles could look into the darkest corners of the mind, but he rarely did so. He watched thoughts the same way he used the car radio—channel surfing like he wanted nothing more than to touch on the surface of a thousand different songs, floating occasionally for the length of a melody on a track that made him smile. It drove Erik nearly mad. Charles read thoughts in the same way: flickering artlessly through the surface reflections of all those around him, only ever stopping to dip briefly into a deep enjoyment of the morning, or a bright memory, or a fond gaze. He sought happiness in humanity like an animal starved to delirium, and he ignored all that lurked beneath and behind and around it until he truly believed that men were good.

It was a deep delusion, one that Charles had maintained for most of his life, and Erik did not imagine that it would be easy to break. He did not _want_ to ‘break’ it, as such, really; he did not want Charles hurt and afraid, miserable, hopeless. He did want Charles furious on their people's behalf, furious and glorious and powerful as he should be.

He would need, then, to show Charles other thoughts—to make him listen. He had always planned to use Charles’s gift in interrogating the Russians and the Americans—that would serve a double purpose, then. He could emphasise to Charles, subtly but firmly, the treachery and violence in their minds; find reasons for Charles to dwell there, to explore with his glowing, good-seeking tendrils of telepathy the murky depths of those men who would have blown them all to dust.

What else? He should try to find the Russian scientists responsible for the helmet and for Shaw’s thought-proof room. That would be personal, for Charles—surely their minds would be full of fear and hatred and violence. It must have been a laborious and thankless task, developing this technology with little access to telepaths for testing. That sort of exertion was surely fuelled by xenophobic poison. Show Charles those minds, make Charles listen to the truth of them and the things they would do.

And from there, surely, Charles’s own brilliance would do Erik’s job for him. Charles _was_ brilliant. He was wildly intelligent, and for all his insistent care for all of humanity, he cared more, far more about Raven, about Hank and Alex and Sean. If Erik could show Charles in the minds of powerful men, in the thoughts that were Charles’s truth, the certain danger that humanity was now becoming to mutantkind, to the boys, blameless, to Raven—then, then Charles would have to begin to see reason. It would not happen all at once, perhaps, but Erik was, as he had reminded himself so many times this week, most practised at patience, and even the greatest stone eventually weathers under the patient pressure of water.

Charles would come to stand with him, in time, if Erik was wise and careful. By the time his bones were fused and he was done with rest and recovery and the doctor’s care, Charles would be truly, willingly, whole-heartedly at Erik’s side.

***

Four hours into the surgery, the surgery was finished. Charles’s back was stitched shut. Anaesthetic wore off into morphine-heavy sleep.

Erik considered separating the operating table from the floor, having Azazel teleport it back to Argentina. He dismissed the idea as folly. An unmapped base in Argentina or an unmapped base in Australia—it would make no difference to Charles.

He sent Angel and Riptide back to Villa Gesell with instructions to feed the prisoners, rest, and then continue their work on strategies for identification and recruitment. He allowed Mystique to see her brother up close, his eyes shut, his breathing deep; she was happy enough after that to doze in the high-backed seat behind the desk in the office, and Erik was happy enough not to look in that direction at all. Azazel had gone elsewhere in the base, and that was fine. He could be found if needed.

Erik made the night a vigil in the white room. So, under his orders, did the three doctors and the two nurses, lest anything go wrong. He slept against his will, the needs of the body overruling the directives of the mind; he slept and dreamed, and in his dream the white walls whispered memories and lies and small metal things shuddered on the walls, in the cabinets.

In the morning, folly or not or it all be damned, Erik separated the operating table from the floor and had Azazel teleport them all back to Argentina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italicised first section is extracted from Percy Bysshe Shelley's _Adonais_.
> 
> Sorry for the wait! Week went and became super busy on me. Will endeavour to finish the next chapter in a more timely manner :)


	15. Chapter 15

Erik was in the bierhaus when he first realised that there was a problem.

To say that he realised was probably unfair—Angel realised, though it required very little realisation.

“He’s projecting again.”

She burst out from behind the bar short of breath, face tight. Her hands were shaking a little as she came around to the table. They were all in the bierhaus except for Charles—Erik sat at the head of the table, Mystique and Azazel on one side, Riptide and Angel on the other. Charles was asleep downstairs, kept asleep. Most of his surgical team had been sent home under similar conditions to Doctor Calker. Calker himself and one of the nurses were still on base, with promises that if their work satisfied Erik, they’d join their fellows at home before long. It was a risk, three and soon to be five people out there, but they didn’t know much. If they were the risk it took to win Charles over when he was more himself, then they were a fairly safe price.

It had been a constructive morning. Threats had been established against the families of the doctors and nurses. Erik, Azazel and Mystique had paid a visit to Emma Frost at the CIA; Erik had decided to avoid travelling alone with Azazel, for now. The teleporter seemed content enough with the abrupt change in management, but no point taking risks.

Emma was well, and not overly put out by Shaw’s demise. She was more committed, it seemed to Erik, to the part of Shaw’s plan that he shared—establishing mutant supremacy—than to Shaw’s obsession with manipulating others or to Shaw himself. She clearly felt some resentment toward Erik, but she was more committed to her own power, safety and comfort than anything, and that was easy.

That established, he had asked her to remain in place for now, but to avoid exposing herself as a mutant to anyone oblivious. Anyone who did know, she would note to be taken care of later. Most importantly, she would listen, extend her range as far as she could and report on anything and everything that might relate to their kind. Later, when there was no one left at the CIA to know who or what they were, he would retrieve her. By then, he hoped, Hank might have rebuilt Cerebro for them. For now, she was most useful in the nest of their enemies.

And then they had come back, and Mystique had suggested that they convene upstairs in the sunlight, and Erik had obliged.

They were finalising plans for Azazel and Mystique for the next week—retrieve all paper records of their kind, destroy all records linking Charles to the Westchester estate—when Angel returned from a routine (and they had routines now, so quickly, the start of a new system, of a new order) check on the cells and their occupants.

Mystique beat Erik to a response. “Again?” Not disbelief, but definitely shock, maybe fear.

Erik rose. It didn’t particularly bother him if Charles was projecting simple dreams or nightmares at the prisoners. Unfortunately, there were things Charles knew that he didn’t want broadcast.

He didn’t object as Mystique followed him, but threw back a blunt “Keep talking; I’ll be back soon,” for Azazel and Riptide as he rounded the bar. Angel led them out of the public room. In the back, the dresser that concealed the door to below was swung forward, the outline of the opening just visible. A push shifted that part of the wall inward. It shut silently behind them before light flickered on in the entryway where they now stood. The final door here was metal, thick, well-sealed, and required a key code. Erik hadn’t broken the door yet, but he knew that he could, easily, if necessary.

Angel reported as they descended the stairs. “It hit me about half-way down here, but I didn’t know what it was.” Her fists closed tightly. “I thought I was just tired or whatever. Then by the time I got to the north corridor I was starting to freak out, and then I started to hear the military guys making noise…and when I got there they were all freaking out ‘cause they were seeing the same things, and it was the same things I was seeing, so I realised it was him.”

“ _Oh_.” Mystique’s response was sharp, almost winded, and Erik knew as he glanced back to Angel that it wasn’t a response. Both girls had tightened visibly, steps slowing, breath quickened. He continued at his pace without them.

When he opened the door to the bedroom, he was only half-surprised to find Calker and the nurse curled pitifully on the floor against the far wall. If Charles’s projection reached half-way up the steps to the surface, it must be tremendously powerful this close to his body. Perhaps today, even Charles would see the value of the helmet.

He didn’t waste time trying to wake Charles with touch—he didn’t dare shake him, anyway, fragile as he was. There was a paper cup of water on the table by the bed, and Erik tipped a portion of it unceremoniously over Charles’s head. A lot of it went on the pillow, but it did the job.

Charles spluttered awake less dramatically than he might have had he been less drugged and more mobile. Nonetheless, the change in the bodies by the wall was evident almost immediately. Breathing slowed, bodies loosened and then, slowly, eyes opened, blinking repeatedly, looking around, disoriented, confused. Charles was facing that way, back turned to the door for this space of hours, and Erik saw him see the doctor, saw the same disorientation mirrored a moment, then the muted horror as Charles realised what he was doing, eyes shut again, and then the doctor and the elderly nurse relaxed a little more, both leaning back against the wall, both staring at Charles on the bed.

Erik waited.

It should not have been surprising that the doctor managed speech before Charles did, but it _was_ annoying.

“He—we were…I could see myself.”

Erik considered ignoring him, but Charles appeared still to be catching his breath. He was heavily dosed, sickeningly—the haziness was too obvious. “Through Charles’s eyes?”

Before the doctor could reply, Charles made a sort of coughing sound, and Erik turned away from the wall. He crouched by the bed. “Charles?”

Another dry sort of cough, a stutter in already uneven breathing. Charles blinked more than was possibly necessary, and chewed on his bottom lip. Erik indicated the water still left in the paper cup. “Do you want some water? In your mouth, that is.”

If Charles caught the irony, he didn’t smile as he might have. His fingers flexed, though, one of the few movements he would make at present, and Erik took it as a yes. He held the cup to Charles’s lips and waited for Charles to move them around the rim of the cup before he tipped a little water and then, when Charles swallowed obligingly, a little more.

“Why are we…” the old woman’s voice was shaky. She had been a sensible, relatively self-assured woman thus far, given the circumstances; far more useful than the younger nurse who had now returned home. Now she sounded frail.

“On the floor?” Calker finished for her. “I don’t know.” He too was struggling to regain his composure, Erik could hear it plainly in his voice, but that was not really a concern.

Charles edged his tongue out of his mouth a little to lick the moisture from his lips, and Erik removed the cup. “Better?”

Charles coughed again, then as Erik was contemplating whether he might need something besides water, gritted out, “Sorry.”

Erik _knew_ the apology was directed at the humans. He had to ask anyway. “For what?”

Charles mostly looked drained, but within that exhaustion he looked devastated. “I don’t…I never do this.” A few ragged breaths. “I’m so, so sorry.”

The tense, thick-aired space of breathing that followed was broken by Mystique and Angel reaching the doorway. Mystique was breathing heavily as well, eyeing Charles’s back with deep pity; Angel stood behind her looking mostly nervous.

“Raven?”

Mystique didn’t call him on the name, and Erik didn’t really care. She came around the bed at a brisk walk. “It’s not your fault.”

Erik saw the moment of unfocus in Charles's eyes as he stared through her, dipped into her mind. She came to kneel by Erik, movements smoother in this lithe form than they’d ever been in her human guise. “I know what you’re thinking, Charles, and it’s stupid. It’s not your fault.”

He held her gaze with a pitiful look of hopelessness. “I’m sorry, Raven.”

She leaned forward and Erik flinched, but she only kissed Charles ever so lightly on the cheek. “Don’t be. It’s the drugs.”

He’d known it, really, but it still set a groan in the back of Erik’s skull. “The drugs are making him project?”

Charles opened his mouth, but Mystique blessedly cut him off. “I told you the other day, it’s only happened once before, when he was drugged after Cain smashed his leg.”

“Raven…” Charles objected weakly, but she only rolled her eyes.

“Erik already knows, don’t be stupid.” She turned her attention back to Erik. “He’s always closed his mind in sleep, he says he thinks he did it automatically as a child, but he thinks that the drugs messed up his control. That must be what’s happening now.”

Charles didn’t argue, which was probably as good as agreement. Pain and bleary consciousness or no, Charles had thus far demonstrated a formidable strength of will when it came to summoning up a few contrary words, though in fairness nothing comparable to his usual flair for opposition.

This all amounted to a problem. “He can’t prevent it from happening again, then.”

Charles looked miserable. Erik was caught between wanting to offer him some awkward sort of comfort and wanting to knock him out with the lamp stand, and settled for ignoring him altogether.

Mystique shrugged. “Look at him. He hates stuff like this. He wouldn’t have done it if he could help it. You know Charles.”

Erik did know Charles. Charles had no problem with a few ‘harmless’ interferences in a man’s free will, but the idea of using his mind to inflict pain, or to assist in the infliction of pain, horrified him.

He turned to the doctor, now climbing unsteadily to his feet with one hand pressed flat against the wall. “Can the dose be lowered?”

Calker glanced at Charles and then at the door before replying. It set Erik’s teeth on edge. “I’ve already lowered it once, because he asked me to. I didn’t think you’d object to that. It’s already less than would usually be used at this stage. He’ll be in a great deal of pain if we give him less relief…”

Charles’s orders over his own, then. Interesting. Of course, he had from the start indicated that he wished the minimum possible quantity of drugs pumped into Charles. That raised its own questions. “I asked you to give him only the minimum dose from the beginning. Why did you act contrary to that?”

Calker cleared his throat. “I administered what would…usually be regarded as the lowest level of pain relief for…an injury this severe.”

“And yet you lowered it at Charles’s request.”

Calker bowed his head in a motion akin to a shrug. “It _is_ his pain.”

Erik had already turned back to Charles. “Did you make him do it?”

Charles's eyes travelled up to meet his slowly. Erik waited. Charles swallowed once. “Did I…”

Erik only caught the movement of his fingers because the rest of him—the rest of the room—was so still. A pathetic motion as if he would bring two fingertips to his temple, could he summon the will to move his arm through the pain that attended movement.

“Well?”

Charles swallowed again. It was so hard for him to drink from the position in which he lay; there were fluids being pumped into him, but there was no avoiding the dryness of his throat. His voice was thick, his words poorly articulated. “I didn’t.”

Erik didn’t look away. “Have you put thoughts in anyone’s head, Charles?”

Charles seemed to consider that a moment. “Yes. The men you kidnapped from the United States. I used some suggestion to calm them when they first arrived.”

That was as likely a deliberate shift of topic as honesty. There was no way to ensure honesty, though, not from Charles. Erik changed tack. “Why did you have the doctor lower your dose of morphine?”

The desolation back again, the deep scar, flickering to the surface before sinking once more. “I need…” a breath out, then slowly in, “My mind…I’m—too dangerous…” He shut his eyes, breathed a moment, opened them again. “My mind is too dangerous to be out of my control.” He spoke each word very clearly, or as clearly as he likely could, each separated from the next.

“You thought something like this might happen?”

Mystique piped in from her silent place by his side—by their sides. “It already did. When we brought the intelligence and the military from the US, remember? He was projecting—like hurt and upset. I was right down the hall so I only got it a bit but Riptide told us—me and Azazel I mean—that it was really strong where you were. But he was awake, so he caught it quickly.”

Erik had forgotten the incident completely in the wake of what had come after. He didn’t feel the need to admit that. “He wasn’t drugged yet.”

“But he was in a lot of pain. That’s got to be why.”

Which contributed very little knowledge to their situation now, except perhaps that cutting off the drugs wouldn’t necessarily help. That would never have been an option, though; he wasn’t interested in torturing Charles. The question remained—why had Charles asked Calker to give him less morphine? “Surely you should have asked for more relief?” He offered the question more to see what Charles would say than for genuinely thinking that Charles would ever ask to be _less_ in control of his mind. “If it’s pain that makes you do it?”

Charles slipped in and out of the faintest edge of a smile. “You know the answer to that.” There was more breath in the jibe than voice.

Erik didn’t rise to it. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

Another faint, fleeting smile, between pained and tired. Exhale through the nose, breathe in through the mouth, teeth caught as per so very often in his bottom lip. “I could feel my control slipping.” It was answer enough, really, but he grimaced, breathed another moment, and then went on, “I need to find…there has to be a balance…”

“Between drugs and pain,” Erik finished for him, suddenly tired of playing games. It was not remotely satisfying when Charles was at such an obvious disadvantage. He was probably telling the truth, anyway, and if he wasn’t, there was no way to know.

Charles made a quiet, brief, “Mm,” the way he said yes when the sun had just risen and he was trying to still be asleep. The way he said yes, apparently, when he was on the edge of too much pain.

“But there is no balance,” he went on as Charles watched, all sad eyes and deep shadows underneath, what looked like half the flesh gone from his cheeks. “Because you’ve already got less morphine in your system than the doctor thinks you should, and it’s still too much for you to control your mind when you’re sleeping.”

Charles looking distraught was something Erik was quite sure he would never really get used to.

“Could we put him somewhere else, maybe?” Mystique’s suggestion was tentative—Erik could hear her worrying that he’d reject it.

“What do you mean?”

She seemed to take courage from that, that he asked. “That’s what we did when we were kids, the time—the one I was telling you about. His range wasn’t very big then, so I helped him move to a different room, at the other end of the house, where he wouldn’t hurt anyone else when it happened.”

“But his range is much larger now,” Erik pointed out.

She nodded quickly. “I know, but, well—I mean you might not, but—there are lots of other bases, right? I mean, there’s the one where we did the surgery, or others…he could sleep somewhere else, somewhere safe but empty. Then he could have more morphine without worrying about it, so he wouldn’t be in so much pain…”

 _And we wouldn’t have his nightmares bursting into our thoughts_ , Erik heard in the trailing end of the sentence. He suspected the telepathy had been bothering everyone this morning, not just the prisoners and the doctors—it wasn’t strong until half way down the stairs, but his four mutants had been hearing odd echoes, flinching occasionally, for the last hour or so up in the bierhaus. It had only happened maybe five or six times and not to all of them at once, but in hindsight it seemed obvious. That wasn’t tremendously problematic, but if it had been strong enough to seriously hinder the girls on the stairs, it would probably drive the prisoners mad before Charles was well enough to help interrogate them.

Housing him elsewhere, though, away from the rest of them…

He turned back to Charles. “What do you think?”

Charles’s eyes were shut, and it took him several moments of no one else answering to realise that the question was directed at him. Even lifting his eyelids seemed to take an inordinate period of time. Erik accepted it, and waited.

Finally—“Me?”

That actually wrung a hard breath of laughter from Erik. “Yes, Charles. What do you think?”

This one, apparently, he didn’t need to consider. “It’s the best plan.”

The words weren’t as strong as they might have been, but they were free of doubt as Charles always was once he’d made a decision.

“You’re not concerned that you might need assistance? I’m sure it’s not standard procedure to leave a patient alone this soon after surgery.”

Calker was glaringly silent. Perhaps his sense of self-preservation had overcome his lofty medical morals, Erik mused sardonically.

There was a very similar wryness to Charles’s smile. “You could come with me.” A pause, a hardness. “The helmet would protect you.”

It was _absurd_ that Erik felt traitorous saying no, and more absurd still that he very much wanted to say yes. He ignored both emotions. “I have a job to do, Charles. Several jobs, in fact.”

The smile seemed finally to have stuck, though it still took Charles several breaths to form words. “Give the helmet to…Dr. Calker, then.” Breath in, breath out. “You wouldn’t need it.”

It was true. But…no. Erik wasn’t sure whether it was rational or not, but he couldn’t trust it. It could all be an elaborate plan. Charles could have been in all of their minds—the doctor’s to say the morphine shouldn’t be lowered further, the girls to report the problem with his ‘broadcasting’, Azazel’s, to do Charles’s will instead of his own…Erik could remove the helmet thinking Charles far away and find him teleported back an instant later. Of course, there would be far simpler ways for Charles to attack him, if that were his aim. Still…

He shook his head sharply. “No.”

The smile fell away from Charles’s face, but that was more a relief than anything—it was a contortion more than a smile, a clown’s painted grin, alien on his soft features.

Mystique's plan _was_ sound, though. Charles couldn’t stay here if he couldn’t be kept from sending out his nightmares, and he couldn’t be, they’d established that. Erik couldn’t have him sending the prisoners mad, he certainly couldn’t have him sending the other mutants mad, and more than either of those he couldn’t have him broadcasting knowledge about Erik that Erik couldn’t afford to have others know. It was a miracle that he’d been accepted as a leader by these few without more of a fight. He’d taken down Shaw without having to do any lasting damage to the rest to prove himself. If they had his whole ugly past in their heads, there was no guarantee that their respect would last. Charles had to be moved. Erik couldn’t leave him alone, though, not yet. Perhaps… “Charles.” Eyes re-opening, slowly. Erik waited until he was sure that Charles was listening. “I could take you somewhere else, and the doctor with you. Your range doesn’t quite extend over this whole base. We’ll go somewhere equally large, and with only two of you, you could be at one end and Calker at the other. If I rig a two way radio, he’d be able to hear you if you needed him. Would that work?”

To Erik’s complete surprise, it was Calker who answered. “It would. Yes, that would work.”

By the slow but certain movement of his eyes, Charles was also surprised. “You…don’t mind?”

Calker laughed with deep and evident discomfort. “You won’t kill me. He might if I don’t see this out. Besides, I committed to treating you. Not willingly, but I made that commitment nonetheless.” Another slightly hysterical laugh, the odd, paradoxically calm hysteria of an elderly and eminently sensible man. “I told my wife I’d been offered a fully paid place at a conference in Europe last minute. I—I’d like to telephone her, but I can be gone…I’ll see this through, and then you’ll take me home and leave me in peace. That was our deal.” He was speaking to Erik now. The fear in the question was too blatant to need stating.

Erik gave him the answer his honesty deserved. “It stands.”

Calker nodded, a genuine smile changing his face just for a moment. He nodded again, then again. “Then yes. I’m willing.”

The nurse was silent. Erik didn’t bother asking her. “Do you need the nurse with you?” It was strange to know that he was fairly confident Calker would tell the truth.

The doctor didn’t look at the woman beside him, and that pleased Erik. After a moment, he replied, “No. I don’t think so. If anything goes wrong—which I don’t expect it will,” he added hastily, “then you can bring her back again, or Dr. Taunton. But I don’t expect to need her.”

Yes, that was the truth. He would _like_ to have a nurse, Erik thought, and normally would, to do the menial tasks that didn’t require his skills, but he wouldn’t keep her away from her family for that. It suited Erik fine. It made no difference to him whether those things were managed by doctor or nurse, and the less time he had another human skulking around here before he had to send her home in one piece, the better.

It was a plan, then. How odd, to have one so suddenly.

Charles’s eyes were shut again. Tired, or drug-tired, or trying to sink away from his pain-wracked, no-longer-useful body. It was a mental exercise Erik remembered so very well.

There was no reason to delay, really. Charles was probably in a great deal of pain, from what Calker had said, more than Erik had realised, and once he was elsewhere the morphine could be increased again. Erik should go back upstairs, ask Azazel and Riptide to identify a useable location and check that it was still secure. It seemed wrong, though, whatever that meant, like simply too much effort, to leave Charles just now, when he was about to send him away entirely. Stupid, so stupid. Did that matter, really? Not enough.

“Mystique, fetch Azazel.”

It was gratifying that she rose instantly, almost gratifying enough to make up for his pathetic attachment to Charles.

“You know the plan. Find somewhere suitable. Angel, ask Riptide to help you settle the prisoners. I don’t want them hurting themselves if they’re as—” he realised belatedly that it was probably foolish to repeat in front of Charles what she’d said about their distress. “Return order," he hedged, "While Mystique and Azazel find a suitable place for Charles to recover.” He hoped Charles hadn’t been listening very hard.

Mystique nodded with silly enthusiasm. He should probably tell her not to claim the plan as her own, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt—it might encourage the others, to know that he valued their ideas. He turned to the humans. “You know the way to the main lounge. Sleep. Ask someone for some food when they come back down. Don’t do anything stupid. You know the consequences. I expect you to look less like you’ve been tortured by the time we find somewhere to take you.”

The nurse opened her mouth to object, but Calker tugged her firmly toward the door by the sleeve, and she kept silent. He’d have Azazel take her back to New Jersey when everything else was done. It was certainly not a priority. Right now, nothing felt like a priority. He probably needed sleep.

When the room was empty but for he and Charles, and the door was shut, he sunk down from his crouch to sit on the floor. It was easier, leaning his shoulder and his head against the bed, at an angle so the side of his helmet didn’t press into his cheek, and sleep, sleep would be so good. Proper sleep, that didn’t involve a chair.

A few inches from the top of his head, though out of his sight from where he was presently resting, Charles made a quiet, incoherent sound, meaningless, then, after a pause, “Erik?”

“Hm?” He even sounded tired: low-pitched and exhausted.

Charles’s breath, just audible and not moving Erik’s hair because the helmet was in the way. “I do appreciate it.” In-out, in-out, like a heartbeat. “You, I mean.”

Erik wondered, sometimes, whether Charles thought he was being clear because he could hear the thoughts behind what others said, of whether he was just deliberately obtuse. He didn’t bother raising his head. “You appreciate…”

“Oh.” As though one could not possibly imagine how his meaning had not been perfectly clear. “You looking after me.” A miniscule cough, then a sharper breath that Erik suspected came with a wince. “I’m furious with you,” another sharper gasp, “And I hate the helmet,” and this again, he should really stop Charles speaking but it was so—so refreshing, to hear him argue, “And I hate everything you’re doing, and—”

“You’ll make yourself ill.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say, in so far as ill was a horrendous understatement, but it was still satisfying to cut Charles off, even if that was petty.

Charles quieted obediently for almost three whole seconds. “I’m so angry with you,” he repeated then, more quietly, “But I do appreciate you—” and the breathing, the breathing through pain “—you trying to take care of me.”

It was classic Charles. Classic, frustrating, foolish Charles, insistently seeing the good. Erik wanted to be angry, he was angry, but he also wanted Charles to appreciate it—he wanted Charles to feel something about him other than anger, because he wanted to bring Charles over to their side, and because—because it was Charles. That was as good an answer as any, he supposed.

He considered sitting up to look at the idiot, then considered the disturbing fact that the helmet was right by Charles’s head, then decided that Charles couldn’t move his arms that far, let alone quickly enough to grasp and remove the helmet before Erik caught him. Perhaps exhaustion was clouding his judgment. He couldn’t find the energy to think so.

He stayed where he was. “I’m still furious with you for being a fool,” he offered belatedly. It was satisfying, in a basic sort of way. Charles didn’t answer, and he went on. “And I hate that you defend people who tried to kill you, and I hate that you won’t see that we want the same things.” There was no more venom to the words than there had been to Charles’s, but that was fine. For now, that was fine. Erik yawned. It was uncomfortable. Damn the helmet. “And I’m so angry at you for trying to control my mind that…”

It wasn’t worth finding an end to the sentence. Charles already knew. “But I do appreciate that you’re alive and trying to recover. I am thankful for that.”

It was really very good, to rest his head.

Charles made another incoherent sound, quiet and inarticulate, and Erik let himself drift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What to say? These boys. This part of the plot was somewhat inspired by a comment from Little D back near the start of the fic, so thank you very much to her!
> 
> I feel like there are maybe 9 or 10 chapters left to this fic, but it continues straight into another one so that's probably immaterial ;)
> 
> Thank you as always for the wonderful comments; they give me the motivation to edit each chapter for posting :)


	16. Chapter 16

“Erik?”

It was unfortunate, really, Erik thought, that he wasn’t a more careless person. Charles was far too immobilised and probably in far too much pain to do anything stupid, and Erik hadn’t slept more than a few hours or anywhere more restful than a straight-backed chair in…nearly five days?

Yet Erik wasn’t a careless person, and he wasn't taking chances, and so he was sufficiently conscious to hear it when Charles murmured his name.

He briefly considered pretending otherwise; it was comfortable, resting here, not talking, not thinking, even if he couldn’t let himself sleep this close by Charles.

“Erik.”

Charles probably just wanted to argue again, and they were not going to get anywhere talking, not right now.

“I know you’re awake.”

Erik groaned quietly as he sat up.

Charles quirked a half-hearted smile. “I need you to keep me awake.”

A week ago that would have been a more-than-usually odd request, but simple, easy to fulfil. They both had more-than-usually unpleasant dreams now and then, and they’d each helped the other put off sleep the better part of a night or two, in the months they’d known each other.

Now it was an obvious request, but fraught, and awkward because everything was awkward. Every one of Erik’s logical impulses told him to dispense with an arrangement that was causing him only misery, but this had become more complicated than that months ago. Charles was useful, regardless. All emotional complications aside, he was immensely powerful and thus categorically indispensible.

He ignored the counter voicing itself insistently in the back of his skull: _no one is indispensible, given sufficient cause_. That was done with. Shaw was dead.

“Does it bother you, being here?” Charles's eyes were searching in a way that made him look shortsighted; trying to compensate for the deafness of the helmet, Erik knew.

The answer was already the bulk of his thoughts; _Yes, it does, because the pain and the drugs being too much to move your arms could all be a ploy to catch me out, to steal my mind in a well-calculated moment._ That was only half true, though, and Charles sounded too inquisitive and not sad enough for that to be the question.

“Being where?” Erik asked instead.

Charles didn’t wave a hand expansively around the room, but Erik could see how he would in the arc of his gaze. “Here.” He offered, utterly unhelpfully, before, “In Shaw’s hideout.”

It was an unfortunate question, in a way; Erik had almost managed to forget that detail of his location. He supposed that was the most honest answer, the choice to forget. “It’s a bedroom. Nothing in here is him. I doubt he chose the furniture.” Nothing like the doktor's rooms in Germany. “The only place here that I know anything about is the bierhaus upstairs, where I killed three Nazi war criminals.”

It was unnecessary, that last, but necessary too, always necessary. Charles so liked to forget that Erik killed people, and Erik had been sure for some time that he knew why. Charles didn’t want to face that he accepted it. He knew that Erik had been right to hunt Shaw and those like him, and when he accepted that, he’d have to face his own untenable moral absolutes once and for all. It made Erik smile, deep, beneath the veneer of the visible. He glanced up to the ceiling, buried impossibly deep in the earth; over to the tastefully carved door; back to Charles. “This base is mine now, not his.”

Charles shifted in what would probably have been a nod but for the strictures of pain, automatic but quickly aborted. He blinked several times, hard, a slow, counted breath, before his shallow composure settled. “But the white room…”

“Is in Australia. And Germany. Not here.”

“It bothered you, though.”

Erik rolled his shoulders, relished the crack. “The doctor wanted a sterile room; we had that one at our disposal. You know everything I have to say about it.”

Charles exhaled slowly, a voiceless ‘hmm’, what would have been another slow few nods as he processed the new information. “It’s so strange…not knowing.” He met Erik’s eyes for the first time since rousing him. “Not that I—you know that I haven’t gone deep into your thoughts without your permission, not since we first met, but…you’d think I’d be tremendously good at…”

Erik had looked away at the first blatant omission—he did know, and Charles hadn’t, but not for want of trying on the beach—and for a moment he was worried that Charles was drifting. He wasn’t; when Erik looked back, Charles appeared tiredly frustrated with his own body. He’d run out of breath mid sentence. Erik waited.

Charles did, at least, take a moment to slow his breath back down, though he did it with jaw and lips tight. The lessening, the slackening of the fervour that _was_ Charles was visible as he let out the ardour that had made him breathless in the first place. “Sorry,” he managed after a long fifteen or twenty seconds.

Erik shook his head dismissively.

Charles smiled, just a little. “I was saying…you’d imagine…I’d be very good at—predicting people, I suppose. Understanding people, reading them, seeing through words and faces. Yet in reality, I’m spoiled. I’ve never had to. And I look at you now…”

Perhaps he was trying to bring up the helmet again, perhaps he wasn’t. Erik wasn’t interested. “This place doesn’t bother me. You were right about the white room.”

“Because I remembered it.”

“Yes. And this place you don’t. Simple, really.” A little acid in that last, not to wound, just to tease. Almost normal, almost.

Charles was patient, that familiar expression of beatific patience, but sulking a little as well; and that was _so_ close to normal, something sharp and surreal. “Don’t be cruel,” he smiled, a tired reprimand, a tease, “It’s not simple and you know it.”

And it was so close, so close, but perhaps it was normal—Charles burrowing for answers like the eternal student he was and Erik tossing mostly good natured barbs at him for it and Charles offering vaguely martyred-sounding answers that he didn’t really mean—or perhaps it was Charles trying to wind around to the helmet again, to talk Erik around, to talk his walls down until Charles could slip back in…

And it made everything bitter. Maybe everything would always be bitter, now.

Erik changed the subject, unapologetically abrupt. “What did you dream about? That the girls heard?”

The smile fell away with remarkable immediacy. Three creases across Charles’s brow, the little lines under the corners of his eyes, the tightness of his mouth and the shadows that aged all his prettiness away like the melt of years. “It’s…there were a few different—” a tight outrush of breath.

Dead end sentences were rarely a problem for Charles—lecturing was his standard mode of communication. Guilt was not an emotion with which Charles was well-acquainted, though, and it showed in his distress. Erik prompted patiently. “What sort of things?” It wasn’t gentle—Charles didn’t need gentle, and Erik didn’t do gentle—but it was helpful, not pushing; a strategic route to an answer.

If anything, Charles’s frown deepened. He tried again. “It was…a confused dream. Not pleasant. It was…highly heterogenous, but—I’ve dreamed a few times, these last few days…”

Ten seconds, then fifteen. Erik caught himself drifting, squeezed his eyes shut, searched for alertness. “About…?”

“It’s hard to—well, no. No, I suppose it’s not _hard_ to explain…”

Four seconds, five. “Charles."

Charles bit his lip, then released it decisively. Strange, the tiny gestures Erik knew without knowing he’d looked that closely. Charles spoke clearly but low. “I’ve dreamed of being strapped down, and—and a long iron pushed through my skull. That was where it began. That’s the sort of—that type of thing.”

Erik considered it. “Why? Are you getting head pain?”

He had not expected laughter, and by the look on Charles’s face, neither had he—it was a harsh, ugly thing, uglier for the way it made him wince at the pain of even that small jolt. Charles still grimaced as he answered, “Shaw’s death was—not painless, my friend. I understand that it was important to you, but it is not something I will forget quickly. That’s all. It’s nothing—present.”

For a long moment, that didn’t make sense to Erik—surely Charles was not honestly pained by Shaw’s death? He’d argued about it, yes, but that was just for show, because he knew it was right, and he knew Erik was going to do it, and he’d _helped_ Erik to do it—and then he understood.

First he couldn’t quite believe it—because surely it wasn't possible to do such a thing without intending to, surely he couldn't—and then he couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t realised, because he knew how Charles’s powers worked. He wasn’t stupid.

But he’d been—preoccupied. Distracted by the sudden sharp triumph of having in his power the man whom he’d hunted all his adult life. Distracted, yes, and suddenly cut off from Charles, suddenly free of Charles, not just his voice gone but his constant floating presence, so that it didn’t seem as though Charles was there any more, so that it seemed as though nothing he did just then, just there, would affect Charles, off outside the submarine…

“I didn’t realise,” he managed at last, level and sensible and vastly inadequate but Charles looked surprised enough that maybe nothing else was needed.

“Oh,” he breathed out, and that, at least, was just as inadequate.

Erik looked past Charles, over him to the clean white wall, tastefully embossed fleurs de lis white on white wallpaper, and that made it easier, to choose words carefully. “I should have realised. I know how your powers work. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You would have done it anyway.” There was a smile in his voice over and through the sadness, and when Erik looked back it was there on his lips too, just. Patience? Vengeful, self-righteous glee? Neither, of course. Just Charles, self-satisfied and self-assured even with tight, twisting stitches across his lower back and pain in every single line from the crease in his forehead to the curl of his toes.

Normally it would have irritated Erik. Right now it was hard to be irritated with Charles. He leaned back against the table by the bedside. The knob of a drawer tried to bury itself in his spine. He watched a different patch of the wallpaper, on the wall past the foot of the bed. He searched for honesty, because spoiled for understanding or not, Charles knew him, and he wouldn’t believe a lie. “No,” he concluded, after a minute’s thought, and that was obvious, to him at least, but, “I would still have killed him, you know that, and I would still have used the coin, but I would have done it quickly. It takes less than a second to shoot a man in the skull, and a coin is just a slightly misshapen bullet.” And that was the truth. “I wouldn’t have done it slowly. I wouldn’t even have considered—I’m sorry.” Sorry enough to feel ill with it, because Erik hadn’t been sorry for anything in a long, long time. But that was the hardest truth, wasn’t it? He’d done more than one thing that day that he hadn’t wanted, and it was not yet five days later but none of them could be taken back. It had been too late in the next moment, and it was definitely too late now. “I never intended to hurt you.”

The smile was slow, and Charles shut his eyes with it, but it was still the strongest he’d looked since—before. He breathed more slowly, once very deeply in and out, and he looked almost, almost peaceful. “I’m glad to know that.”

His eyes were shut, and Erik watched him, watched him smile, face still stuck taut with the constant hum of pain, still angled awkwardly where he couldn’t really move it.

Yet the smile deepened a moment, or sharpened, the place he would have nodded again before letting it go, could he move his head, and whether he blamed Erik for that or not, he repeated it and it was true—“I’m glad to know that.”

***

Most of the more obvious ways to keep Charles awake were, unfortunately, not presently advisable.

Physical contact was out of the question, or at least too stressful to bother with, with Charles’s back so fragile and half of his skin painfully sensitive with proximity to the injury and half of his skin painfully sensitive with the wear of lying still so long and half of his skin dead to touch altogether, his body good as gone from the hips down.

Arguing was to be avoided, as was any serious discussion because with Charles, all serious discussion was arguing. Erik didn’t want Charles getting worked up again, breathing too fast, hurting himself.

That left chess, but everything in the room that Erik could draw pieces from was more or less essential to Charles’s health; or more trivial conversation. Erik was very bad at trivial conversation.

As Charles settled dangerously toward sleep again, blinking repeatedly as though that might convince his consciousness to stay here with his pain, Erik resettled himself so that the drawer knob knobbled a different part of his back, and frowned at Charles’s motionless knees. “Tell me something.”

Charles blinked several times more. “Mm?”

“Tell me something. Anything. Something—don’t lecture me. Just talk.”

Charles considered that with a quiet, closed-lipped ‘hmmm’. “You already know most of all there is to know about me.”

Erik doubted that, but didn’t say so. “Doesn’t matter. You’re nearly thirty years old. I don’t know everything you’ve ever done in twenty-nine years.”

A cough of a laugh, then several wheezing breaths and a long flinch, teeth pressed hard into bottom lip. Charles found his voice quickly, but it was strained. “I mustn’t laugh.” Self deprecating, not aimed at Erik. “Wait a…” In and out, in and out, in and out, then holding his breath for one, two, three, and quite abruptly he was settled again, a slow, calming breath out. The pain couldn't lessen that quickly, Erik was sure, but Charles was getting better at ignoring it. He opened his eyes to look at Erik, unnervingly frank, unnervingly like they might be a continent north of here, well and whole in Charles’s home. “What do you want to know?”

Erik shrugged. “I don’t care. Tell me college stories. Tell me about your thesis. Tell me about all the professors you fucked to—”

“I never—”

Erik had to smile at the indignation Charles had managed to summon up. He shook his head. “Recite poetry for me, Charles, I don’t care. If you’re talking, you won’t fall asleep and you won’t end up unintentionally in everyone’s heads again.”

Charles had a particular gift for taking the least likely of any given set of options. So it was that Erik found himself leaning against a profoundly uncomfortable side table—the helmet stopped the edge digging into his head, at least—listening to the whole of Shelley’s _Adonais_ recited in rounded vowels and dreaming verse, then a brief admission that there had been one tutor, not a professor, only a few years older and it was years after Charles had been the man’s student so it wasn’t as though—and then selections from Whitman’s _I Sing the Body Electric_ , because even with his flawless memory Charles could only remember two of the stanzas and they were from half way through and not consecutive, and then Erik had retrieved the little metal tree from his pocket without thinking and Charles had spotted it and that had been the end of poetry.

“Is that a tree?”

Erik took a moment to register the question; it came mid-line, “ _Each has his or her place in the procession, All is a procession; The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful—_ is that a tree?”

He hadn’t thought about taking it from his pocket, but he’d made it for Charles to begin with, and he held it up so that Charles could see more clearly. “It’s the dogwood outside your bedroom window in Westchester.”

“You made it?”

Erik ran a thumb up the underside of one of the broader branches, traced its forking to the sharp tip of a twig. “I’ve been able to do this sort of thing for years. It’s much easier to sculpt something like this than to move part of a machine without changing its shape, say. Or to move anything large.”

“I know.” Charles smiled almost uncertainly. Uncertainty was so bizarre on Charles. “I meant…you made the tree from outside my window.” Another, more familiar smile. “It’s beautiful.”

The flower under Erik’s fingertip was too tiny for him to touch the inside curves of the petals. He _had_ made the token with Charles in mind, but he’d come to like it. It wouldn’t fit in a trouser pocket like the coin always had, but that was alright. He had the coat’s massive pockets for now, and maybe he’d give it to Charles when it became inconvenient to carry with him. Maybe he’d make something else for Charles, when he had a spare moment. Something simpler; Erik doubted he’d have the unoccupied time again in the near future to replicate the little tree.

Charles was still examining the miniature dogwood, as best he could without moving. “This is what you meant, when you told me you earned money manufacturing metal objects after you left Israel.”

“No,” Erik laughed the denial, “no, that was…I made chain for a while in Poland, I altered the composition of alloys for a while…I made bowls once, in a tiny village in Germany…” Charles and his mind and his memory. Erik wondered sometimes whether it was an automatic process for him, absorbing every detail that passed him by in words or in thought and piling it together, piecing it into the complete image of a person. The connections that no one else would make. “I’ve never done this for money. I had the gold if I needed funds, I only worked because it seemed to be the done thing in a normal life. I do this to relax.”

“I’ve never seen you do it before.”

It was true. Not that he’d ceased working metal for pleasure in the past few months, but that Charles would never have seen him work like this. These tiny things, exact in every detail and utterly useless, the antithesis of all Shaw had ever wanted for his powers, were for when the fury bubbled under his skin and wouldn’t break, for when the singularity at the centre of his chest that was all the world imploding around and within strained to drag right through his mind and leave it razed bare and delirious. For all that Charles was tremendously frustrating, Erik had never felt that way in his presence; he wasn’t sure he’d felt that way at all in the last few months. When they’d first set out together from Virginia, trains and cars and faceless rooms in hotels and motels, it had dogged him then, as it often did, but after a couple of weeks…it was a solitary thing, to feel that way, and Charles made it difficult to be solitary.

“ _The wildest largest passions,_ ” Charles quoted softly, “ _bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost, become him well…_ ” He frowned in thought, searching for the next line.

“Did it occur to you to recite a poem you know?”

“I know Whitman.” The frown deepened a little in contradiction. “I just haven't read it in a decade or so. It’s a beautiful poem, the ‘Body Electric’. It’s about the equality of men.” He didn’t wait for Erik to express an opinion on that. “May I see the tree more closely?”

Erik held the little replica obligingly higher, resting in his hand on the edge of Charles’s pillow, and Charles inspected it as though it might be hiding something, or simply speaking in a voice he couldn’t hear. Finally, he remarked, “The branch on the left side, your left, with three large forks; the closest fork to me never flowers. I’m not sure why.”

It was a bizarre fact to share, but Erik took it for what it was; he drew his attention back from Charles, focused on the metal resting against the heel of his hand, and one by one tiny flowers dropped into his palm until the one little patch of the tree was unadorned.

They were miniscule shards of metal, too small to be a shape until one looked closely, but Charles watched as he tipped them onto the little bedside table.

“Better?” Erik asked with only a touch of irony as he presented the amended model.

“Beautiful,” Charles affirmed, not quite smiling, and “Very accurate.”

And then, to himself perhaps, or perhaps just a suddenly remembered line, he returned to reciting in a low murmur, “ _Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float—and the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts, For you only, and not for him and her?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT [16 Aug 2011]: Sorry that the next chapter's taking so long! I have four big deadlines falling together in a week's time, so writing time is pretty limited right now. I've written 1300 words of the next chapter though, and I should have it up within the next three days. Again, sorry for the slowdown, and thanks for waiting :)) <3
> 
> ***
> 
> In my mind, this chapter is the moment the water hangs in the air before it splits and falls. Also, I discovered my new favourite thing about Erik: he is oblivious to sap XD Writing this chapter went something like this. I would go to write:
> 
> CHARLES: IS THAT THE TREE FROM OUTSIDE MY WINDOW? OMG ERIK YOU MADE ME A TREE *hearteyes* THAT IS SO SWEET AND TOUCHING AND REVELATORY OF THE EPIC GOODNESS HIDDEN INSIDE OF YOU.
> 
> ERIK: Tree? What tree? I don't see any tree *mutter mutter tree-hide fumble cough* Don't know what you're talking about I am a shark sharks do not do sap.
> 
> EXCEPT instead, Erik would go...
> 
> ERIK: Yep, it's a tree.
> 
> And Charles would go...
> 
> CHARLES: OMG YOU MADE ME THE TREE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW aqerkjhegfkjaerhg HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE FURIOUS WITH YOU WHEN YOU DO THINGS LIKE THIS IDEK WHAT ARE YOU
> 
> And Erik would go...
> 
> ERIK: I'm a telemagnetic mutant. It makes it much simpler to sculpt metal trees.
> 
> And I would go OMG ERIK YOUR BIZARRE COMBINATION OF complete emotional alien and utterly self-assured superhero (/villain) makes my heart sing XD He just has *no* idea what normal relationships are like, and this 'friendship' and 'relationships' thing is so without precedent to him that he has *no* idea that making a metal tree might be sappy and adorable, and the idea of being embarassed or shy about something is just totally foreign to him. He just makes it up as he goes along and never looks back. I LOVE HIM (and want to kill him, but hey).
> 
> Right, I'm done :P Comments are love; very many thanks to Quoththewriter, Babblebuzz, Kyrene3, OrangeOwlett and Little D for comments last chapter :) <3


	17. Chapter 17

It was not so different from the Villa Gesell base, the spot that they found for Charles. Most of it was beneath the ground, as seemed to be the norm for Shaw’s properties. It made sense, when one knew the whole story; Shaw had planned global nuclear war, and he would eventually have needed a system of defensible bunkers to shelter whatever mutants he’d found, to conduct business out of the way of the apocalypse. Like the bierhaus an improbable distance outside Villa Gesell, like the doctor’s offices in Germany and Poland, the building above ground appeared innocuous, not overly large. It was, as Erik had instructed, in the middle of nowhere. On three sides, the little—house?—gave onto desert, sprawling sand, ochre brown. From the fourth, cliffs dived sheer into the ocean, and the ocean spread out into the curve of the Earth. Soon, the sun would set into the water. A west coast, then. A west coast of somewhere in the world.

“Where are we?” Erik asked, standing in the midst of a hundred miles of sand and water.

“Peru. Did you know there was desert in Peru?” Mystique’s eyes scanned the distance around them, breaths deep and dreaming. It was a place to inspire awe, certainly—the edge of the world, or the vast, empty plain of an alien planet.

“The nearest settlement is two-hundred miles away,” Azazel added. “I have seen tourists here in the past, very small groups, but only far down there,” he pointed along the cliffs of the coast, disappearing like a crack in the sky into the distance, “where there is a beach. There is no road to here.”

Inside was comfortably furnished, an ultra-modern holiday cabin transported suddenly and bizarrely from somewhere more hospitable. The sort of place you build when you have a teleporter, Erik supposed. Huge reinforced glass windows, a breezy deck, an adequate bedroom. A hundred rooms beneath the ground, sprawling down through the cliffs and back away from the water. Distance enough for their needs.

“Just south of here is Chile,” Mystique explained down a grey, metal-thrumming corridor inside the cliff, “and it turns into the driest desert in the world, but Azazel told me there are villages there because they collect chemicals or something. He says there’s rain sometimes here, and nothing that people come here for.”

Nothing left to see, and one room is good as the next when you have the services of a teleporter.

“It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?” Mystique smiled. “Different, but…something bleak can be beautiful, I think. And different’s good sometimes, right, Magneto?” It was lightheartedly conspiratorial and Erik felt tired.

He gave a nod to Azazel, and they were in Argentina.

“Well?” Mystique was still smiling.

Erik returned the expression thinly. “Beautiful, yes.”

She glowed, and it would do.

***

In the central lounge of the wheel-spoke maze of the Villa Gesell base, Doctor Calker was dosing in an armchair. The remaining nurse was also in an armchair, but determinedly awake and sitting straight enough that she could have been the one with metal rods in her back. Calker had made a list, unprompted, of things he’d need in order to care for Charles in another location, and Azazel was transporting them in advance. The teleporter had confirmed with Erik that he was not required for other business and then gone about it of his own volition, which was a development both pleasant and surprising. They were working well as a unit, or beginning to, already.

Erik didn’t have the faintest idea where Riptide might be or what he was doing, but locating him could wait. Angel was leaning against the back of a couch, Mystique curled up on another, waiting for him to say something—to say what?—and he would have to get to this eventually. He took an empty armchair, motioned for Angel to be seated.

“Wake Doctor Calker,” he instructed the nurse without preamble, and she did it, a rough shake of the shoulder and terrified eyes.

These were the people who had heard Charles.

Of course, that wasn’t true. There were another few score of men who’d heard him, but they would have ground their stories into each other by now, and Erik doubted they’d give him straight answers without coercion. That left these four. From these four, he could find out where he stood.

“Should I get Janos?” Angel sounded co-operative, at least; Erik frowned at the name but it probably wouldn’t matter for Riptide. The man was unlikely still to have any personal attachments.

Erik stilled her with a raised hand. “I want to talk about Charles’s projections.”

The reactions were predictable: Angel tensed as though ready to be struck, the doctor drew in a steadying breath, the nurse looked caught between terror of Erik and terror of what she remembered. Mystique’s face changed in an inhuman way that was difficult to read because her taut, rubber-silk skin didn’t crease and her features shifted over her bones more than a human’s would. Erik could assume, regardless—she was sad for Charles and she was worried for all of them and she was angry that Charles had been hurt, angry like Charles should be that the woman had fired a gun.

She would give him a faithful account regardless of the others. Calker would try. Angel would probably try. The nurse would have to go first, with no one else to parrot; nothing to tell him but the truth. Erik summoned a thin smile, Charles a memory in his head with a laughing grimace _it’s a little…sharkish, my friend; I suspect that Hank and Sean think you look ferociously hungry…_ and laughing, angel’s bow lips pressed together and merry eyes. “Mrs. Rochester,” and in the present where reality was not suspended, the woman shuddered like a cornered creature ready to fight or flee or die on the spot. Ferociously hungry, then. That was fine. “Tell me what you saw.”

The nurse looked to the doctor, who began, “It was—”

“Nurse Rochester first, please.” And maybe ‘sharkish’, if it was even a real word and not just Charles, was just another word for metal, and he _was_ that.

Neither of them argued. The nurse was shaking a little. She stared very hard at the table a few feet away; putting her thoughts in order, perhaps. “It was…” she echoed the doctor. “Well…i’ was like nightmares.” She glanced very briefly at Erik, checking that she was doing the right thing, then hurriedly stared away again. “Sometimes…men do…when they come in, or after surgery—when they’re in pain, an’ need heavy opiates…they mumble and rant, it’s—they’re delirious, you know. We usually try to keep ‘em quiet an’ as calm as we can. So that they don’ hurt themselves.”

Nothing he didn’t already know. At least she was talking. “And what did you see?”

The nurse nodded and frowned a little, calmed a bit at the approval of her start. “Well…I think…it was like we—I—saw everything that he did—he was delirious, so…i' was not very—nothing in order, you know—”

“Incoherent,” Calker provided.

“Incoherent,” the nurse agreed with another nervous glance. “Lots a' different things, nightmares, one after another you know.”

‘Lots of different things’ didn’t bode well, but ‘incoherent’ might. Any remote sliver of luck granted, Charles’s nightmares were too incoherent to reveal anything true. Erik had never believed in luck. He summoned his least ‘sharkish’ look. With patience, he would know everything. “Tell me about them, one at a time.”

And she did—with first apprehension and then pain in every syllable, but with a laboriousness that suggested she was trying her limited best to obey.

***

 _The first dream was not a new one, on the day that Charles Xavier lost his grasp and cast out his dreams for the first time since childhood._

 _There was the stillness, being strapped down, and the stillness of silent minds, of no one, nothing near enough, and the waiting, waiting that shifted in and out of older nightmares, of stepping into his mother’s mind and trying to be steel, and trying to being the beams to hold her up, and trying to be enough to hold her together; of falling into Cain’s mind and finding too much pain and too much hate; of hiding bruises and stumbling on scarred feet and head spinning with a dozen blows and pain and longing and a world of people silently hurting inside their heads, screaming out for solace he had no power to give. And then there was the end of waiting, and there was Erik pushing pain through his head like the end of the world and there was have to keep still and have to keep quiet because this was important, and this was necessary, and he could bear this, he could do this, for Erik, because then—and then—_

 _And then there was somewhere else. A second dream? Or a third, or a fourth or an end to counting—another place. A wide place, dark, but two little girls across the field with dark plaits and clean dresses, their Sunday clothes, Charles knew, and how did he know that? And couldn’t they see that the ground was shaking, that the grass was rolling in waves and shouldn’t they scream, or shouldn’t they run, and why were they playing outside when the world was falling apart? The waves of the earth crested and broke into metal, a seafoam crest of metal that broke and split and congealed into wide thick sinuous ropes and couldn’t they see? Couldn’t they see—and they didn’t have time to scream because it pulled them by the throats, silver-grey roped around their throats and pulling down into the earthy morass of the ground and grass, grass that was grey and surged to take them down and the wideness of their eyes, wide, wide eyes in such tiny faces as their clean church dresses disappeared into the ground and the metal pulled them under—_

 _But why would—_

 _Raining, raining because he was outside, outside in a field, grey grass and the surging earth and two little girls gone down under the metal grass and thick, sinuous snakes of steel roiling in the rain, in the air, hard rain, stinging—_

 _But metal was Erik’s, metal was all Erik’s, mastered by him, utterly, and so why—_

 _Was this a dream? Yes, yes of course, a nightmare, a dream of metal grass and metal skies and metal that wraps and drags and destroys—_

 _But why would he dream of this?_

 _What had Erik ever done to—and Charles wasn’t afraid of Erik besides, he’d never been afraid of Erik, he wasn’t now, he wasn’t going to be, so why would he—_

 _But he was somewhere else._

 _Claustrophobic. That was the first thing, the distracting thing. Cold, cold and claustrophobic, or was it terribly hot? Sweat and sweat pooling congealing in elbows and the tip of his nose and burning, burning searing flesh burning like—_

 _Like what? Like nothing, now? So hard to know, so hard to tell, and was it dark, or could he see everything? Yes, yes everything there was to see which was not much, not much except—metal._

 _Erik._

 _Charles opened his mouth cautiously—the air seemed very thin. “Erik?”_

 _Was it bars around him, close and closer? Or was it bullets? A thousand bullets pushed close enough together become bars, and bars pushed together become walls, and walls pushed together become air and sky and ground and everywhere and thick, the air was thick, not thin, too thick to breathe and hot, and frozen still—_

 _—and he was somewhere else._

 _—and he was screaming noise noise noise noise noise noise raw and raw and—_

 _—screaming—_

 _—screaming and 1, and_

 _2, and_

 _3  
And  
Screaming screaming screaming screaming_

 _and Not._

 _—unconsciousness?_

 _Is that what the end of pain means? Or was this another dream? Somewhere, nowhere, and all that metal, all that metal that must have been Erik’s doing was gone, so—_

 _Charles looked down at his chest. His shirt was ripped—it had missed his cardigan—it was protruding out from his chest, a long, thin bit of—wire, but thicker than wire tended to be, and going nowhere—except there, it was going somewhere, curling around and back in at the side between his ribs, back through his chest and out the side of his neck and in the back of his shoulder and out the side of his arm and in and out of his thigh and—_

 _—screaming again, and pain pain pain pain pain pain pain pain—_

 _—metal worming through the body and metal smothering in to choke and crush and—_

 _–pain and pain and sound and noise and noise and screaming and all the numbers from one to ten and white eyes blind and the screaming soles of your feet and hopeless hopeless why why why why why why why—_

 _—metal smothering in to choke and crush and metal reaching from the ground to pull little girls under and metal worming through the body and endless pain and faces that change every time you blink and metal bars and tight-packed bodies and cold faces pacing past and pain and pain and—_

***

The doctor’s recital was very much like the nurse’s.

Angel had missed most of the nightmare, but moments matched up, images the four motley witnesses pieced together from each other.

Mystique had little to add when the others were finished, but for one thing—

“There was…me. He was dreaming of me.”

 _But probably not_ , Erik reflected dully, _of you causing him every wild variety of pain he could imagine_. “Not surprising,” he noted.

Mystique shook her head rapidly, face hard. “Not like…not dreaming of me like me, dreaming of me like—like a monster. Like—” she motioned around the misshapen little circle of chairs—“like the other nightmares.”

Like Erik burying children alive and ripping Charles to pieces? “How?”

She swallowed before she spoke, and her voice came out thin—teary. “Changing faces. That's whate—the changing faces, they were me. But like—ugly, monstrous, rank, horrible faces, or normal faces turning into—and I was afraid of it. I mean—he was. The—the stuff Charles was projecting about me…there was fear with it.”

Erik stepped on the immediate impulse—to go into Charles’s room and show him a hard right hook—and considered whether there was anything useful to know in this. What should he say to her now?

Mystique beat him to words. “I’ve always known that…I mean, he’s always preferred—that I look human…” there were tears in her eyes now, too, though she was keeping herself passably calm. “I just…never thought…. He’s never liked—this.” She gestured with no small deprecation at her own body. “I suppose I knew that. But…he’s afraid of it. He really finds me that disgusting…” she shook her head, three times, four, and at least there was fierceness back in that. She looked up at Erik. “Just like Hank.” A bitter little laugh. “You knew, didn’t you?” Another frantic shake of the head, side to side, furiously trying to adjust. “That’s what the whole world’s like…they can’t see past it.”

It was moving too fast now, she was moving too fast. She was right, of course, at least in part, but that Charles thought that way—it seemed—regardless, he couldn’t have her turning against Charles, or turning the others against him. Whatever foolishness was going on in Charles’s head, it could be changed, in time. For now, the situation needed to be managed. Erik met her gaze, and didn’t try to smile. “I don’t believe that Charles feels that way.”

“But—”

“Charles is one of us, and he loves you. He’s not himself right now. It would seem that he’s become afraid of both of us.”

And that softened her face, a bit. Erik offered a tiny smile to the uncertainty there. “Charles isn’t normally afraid of me, is he?”

“…no.” Confusion replacing fury. Malleable. “The rest of us were…well, you are—” an awkward smile, turning quickly. “But Charles isn’t afraid of you.”

“No,” Erik agreed, with no idea whether he believed it. “And yet it seems he is troubled at present by very vivid nightmares about my abilities. As you say he is about yours. I don’t think we need assume that he has always felt that way.”

And she was nodding, slowly.

“I’ll talk to him about it. Thank you for telling me.”

Smooth blue fists clenched a moment on knees, then—“No problem.” And she was smiling. She was _grateful_. “Thanks.”

Simple as that.

There was nothing more needed, and Erik let the silence settle a little—let Angel and perhaps even Calker watch her gratitude. He still didn’t know how long he’d have to put up with the doctor, after all. He still didn't have a clue what he was doing here. He didn't know what he was doing with Charles, and he didn't know how he could do anything else without Charles, and he didn't know how to manage four—subordinates—who seemed to think that he knew everything, and he had no idea how he'd convinced them of that, either. But—he had. That was something.

“Uh…” Angel spoke up tentatively—asking permission. Perfect. Erik almost smiled.

He turned his gaze to her.

She looked uncomfortable. “He’s still…the Professor, I mean, he’s still going somewhere else, yeah? ‘Cause…I mean even if you talk to him…it could still happen again? So…”

“Only until he’s well,” Mystique put in before Erik could decide whether or not his annoyance at Angel was justified. “He’s going to stay in—”

“Elsewhere,” Erik spoke firmly over the end of her sentence. “Charles will recover elsewhere, attended by Dr. Calker, until he is well enough to work with us.” And if Charles was going to continue insisting that Calker make visits home, then the doctor could have no idea where ‘elsewhere’ might be.

The silence this time was uncomfortable: two outsiders making the room too full, two girls barely into adulthood and clumsily nervous about the future, and Erik, worried about Charles even though that was stupid, Erik who only knew how to make a room uncomfortable, and only Charles knew how to fix that. And now, apparently, Charles dreamed of him as a cruel, monstrous enemy.

Well, he was cruel, wasn't he? And ‘monstrous’ in its common use is just another synonym for different.

It was funny, really, or at least pathetically ironic. All the time he’d known that Charles should fear him; all the time he’d known that he should fear Charles. All the time he’d said just that, told Charles that, told himself that and now, when it all came true…

Now, it hurt as though he’d been foolish enough not to know it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this chapter took so long! As I've told a couple of people, I have four deadlines coming up right on top of each other (in a week), and then I'm interstate for a week. So updates might be a little sporadic for the next fortnight. That said, I have chapter 18 half-written, so it shouldn't be too long! I was thinking; if I don't have time to write chapter 19 for a week or two, would you guys like me to start posting one of the other fics that fits in with this one? It's from the same 'verse but earlier (pre-Cuba), so it won't spoil for this story XD Some of you might already have read it at the kinkmeme. Anyhow, let me know, and if anyone's interested I'll post a chapter of that if I have trouble getting this one done :)
> 
> Thanks lots and lots and lots to hopefulwriter27, michmush, Little D (I swear I will reply to you in the near future!), LatinaFangirl, AbandonedWorld and Babblebuzz for their comments last chapter--it's really appreciated :) Thanks also to those who left kudos :D And thanks to everyone for reading! <3


	18. Chapter 18

Only five of them went to the little house in the desert: Erik and Charles and the doctor, Azazel to take them there, Mystique because it was easier than leaving her behind.

They materialised in the lobby that merged with the lounge area, dark now; they’d missed the sun setting. Even so, the moonlight through the windows was startling, the ocean spreading out from every wall, all glass and open space that belied the compactness of the structure.

Erik wheeled Charles silently through the only doorway and into a little hall, opened the door on the right. This was the only bedroom in the house, sparsely but comfortably furnished. Erik doubted the house had ever been lived in. Charles was prone and motionless and watched nervously by Dr. Calker, ceaselessly. They settled Charles into the bed together, Erik and the doctor, speaking little, the doctor giving directions and Erik following. Mystique stood close by Azazel against an unadorned wall, looking discontent, as though she might just be mulling so loudly that Charles would be forced to respond. Charles looked pained, and gasped occasionally when they moved him, and kept his eyes firmly shut.

***

Erik no longer had any idea what time it might be when he sent Azazel and Mystique to show Calker into the underground labyrinth where he was to hide from Charles’s mind. Azazel was good with distance, he’d make sure they were out of Charles’s projection range, and Mystique would be sure that Calker could navigate his way back to the surface.

Erik waited until they were gone, a hidden door behind a bookshelf populated by Nazi propaganda and murder mystery paperbacks and pseudo-scientific journals and cheap pulp. Then he appropriated one of the chairs from the little dining room and returned to Charles’s new abode.

Charles was sleeping, or perhaps just drifting, or perhaps just trying to. Erik set the chair a little way from the side of the bed and let him rest.

It was not an engaging room to observe. The bed had a pair of small tables, and there was a featureless wardrobe against the wall on the far side. Erik’s chair rounded out the furnishings, and he supposed it would have to remain that way; the room was small enough that the IV stand made it appear crowded. It didn’t matter much. The room was white and clean and isolated, and that was all Charles needed to recover.

The whole house was tiny—bedroom and bathroom and a big room full of boxes down this end, and a long unpartitioned strip of a room along the cliff-edge that was lounge and kitchen, tiny dining room down the far end and tiny lobby with its little open-air deck down here and even _Erik_ who’d lived his life in faceless shoeboxes had actually owned an apartment not much smaller than this, once—but that mattered even less. Charles couldn’t leave the room, and when he _was_ well enough to leave the room, he’d come back to Argentina and help.

When Charles opened his eyes, Erik was sitting with elbows on knees, spinning an airborne puddle of silver steel like a potter with a wheel into a perfect sphere like a large marble, thinking of Charles dreaming of him crushing Charles’s body in its centre.

Charles couldn’t hear it, and Erik didn’t notice Charles until he spoke. “It’s quite beautiful.”

The sphere stopped in midair, perfectly still, immune to gravity and to momentum.

Erik looked past his idle creation and found Charles’s eyes heavy but open, his face tired but aware. “This?”

The sphere gave a little bob in its place.

Charles smiled, just for a moment.

They watched each other, understanding nothing.

“The ocean out there is beautiful too. I only caught a glimpse, but…”

Erik nodded.

“Where are we?”

“Peru. A desert. Don’t tell Calker, I don’t want him to know.”

Charles hummed agreement. “You’ve been taking him back to his family?”

“Not recently.” Erik frowned. “Don’t worry about it. If I weren’t handling him your way, I wouldn’t care whether he knew where we are.”

Charles accepted that, whether for the logic of it or his exhaustion Erik wasn’t sure. Charles’s eyes were still open, though, still focused, and Erik swallowed ‘I shouldn’t care’, and waiting for Charles or Mystique to bring it up, and easy ways out. “The doctor and nurse told me about the dream you broadcast.”

Charles’s face shifted only minutely, neither smile nor frown. “I only remember snatches…not much more than what I told you earlier.” His vagueness was eloquent. A sculpted expression of regret. “I’d lost control. That makes it difficult to remember a dream.”

He was lying, Erik was sure, and he saw little reason and had little patience to hedge around it. “You dreamed of me ripping you apart in a hundred different ways.”

That, at least, got a reaction—a sharper draw of breath, a widening of eyes—though whether Charles genuinely didn’t remember or was simply caught by his bluntness Erik couldn’t be sure.

It didn’t make much difference, really. He went on. “I’d like to say that I don’t find that fair, but I understand that it may be. I hurt you in the way that I killed Shaw, and I was responsible for deflecting the bullet that—struck you.”

Charles was watching him impassively—unreadable. Erik was deeply glad that he’d decided on what to say in advance. The impulse was anger, and anger would not help him here. He pushed on, calm and rational. “I also understand that dreams do not necessarily reflect conscious beliefs but rather subconscious fears.” And he’d learned that in his own dreams, dreams that refused to remember that he was too strong for Shaw to hurt him anymore—though his dreams had been right in the end, hadn’t they? Still. This was the most important part. “But I want to be sure you know that neither of those…incidents…”

This didn’t come naturally. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say it—he certainly didn’t want Charles to think he’d purposely harmed him—it was just. Not something he had much practise in. He summoned the little sphere to his hand, and rolled it there beneath his fingers, and breathed out his frustration. “I haven’t hurt you on purpose Charles, I hope you know that. With Shaw—I didn’t—I’ve told you already that I didn’t realise…” He _had_ told him already, but Erik knew he hadn’t explained it well. He’d been thoughtless, yes, and maybe he was a thoughtless person sometimes, he could accept that, but it was—“I’ve been alone a long time, Charles, and having you inside my head was such a—”

Charles knew that too, of course. They’d talked about that, not often, but once or twice. Erik looked Charles in the eye. “When you were gone—when I blocked you out, it was such a…I was alone again.” How to describe it? “It was very…” Erik frowned, hard. “You know what it’s been to me to have you—present, to not be alone after all these years—you understood that before I did.” And if it was the weakest suggestion of a smile on Charles’s face at that, it was hardly surprising, the smug little git. Erik shook his head. “With you gone, it—you’ve seen my mind, Charles. It left very little to think of but him. I didn’t realise it was hurting you—I should have, but…”

And that was it, really. He’d already told Charles that he would have made it quick if he’d known, and that was the truth, and Charles never needed to be told anything twice. That still left the bullet, but there was even less to say about that. Erik pressed the steel marble between two fingers, watched one end thin down to a point. He had to say _something_ about it. “The bullet…” What could he say? “It was—a cruel accident. You know that already.” A cruel accident, and a cruel moment of thoughtlessness, and Erik knew that in Charles's position he would never forgive a man those things, but Charles—Charles forgave everyone, didn’t he? Erik swallowed the irrational fear, the gnawing bitterness— _he forgives humans, that doesn’t mean he’ll forgive you_. “I never intended to hurt you. Do you understand that, Charles?”

It took what seemed an unreasonably long time for Charles to reply—a clock ticking by the bed, the ocean, like a whisper, the endless pull of the tides—and when he did his voice was quiet, deliberately soft as much as it was thin, suspended under the waves. “I’ve had people in my head my whole life. But never anyone I’ve loved as I have you.”

Erik really wasn’t sure what to say to that.

Charles almost smiled, but not quite. “It hurt, you know—mostly that you mistrust me, but I already knew that—though I did think…still.” And it wasn’t a smile, not really, not so much as it was just infinitely sad in that way that only Charles could manage convincingly. “It hurt that you threw it away so easily, the—companionship.”

“Companionship is not—”

“I know. You’re still here, trying to make me well again, but it was—you know it too, my friend, that there was a very pleasant—peace, I suppose, in the presence of your thoughts.” He held Erik’s gaze a moment before adding, “I will venture to say that you felt a similar peace, in my presence with you. And it is—good, for lack of a better word, to know that you did not discard that with no feeling at all.”

And all of this was really, really exactly what Erik didn’t want to discuss. “The helmet isn’t up for debate, Charles.”

“I know.”

“Then—”

“They weren’t my nightmares.”

Erik thought that over several times. This was Charles, though, and Charles made sense half of the time if Erik was lucky. “What?”

“It started with my nightmare. The one that I told you about.” Charles waited.

It took a moment to make the connection, but yes—the nightmare Charles had told him—four hours ago?—of being strapped down, of Erik—it made him furious to think it—forcing something through Charles’s skull—it _had_ been there, in the nurse’s recollections. “I remember,” he confirmed.

Charles was looking troubled again. “I was delirious—pain, I suppose, and morphine has always had a heightened effect on my consciousness. I believe that several older nightmares may have—surfaced as well, memories from my childhood. Once I lost my grip on my mind, though, it was only a matter of time before…” Charles broke off with a weak cough, licked his lips. “Water?”

There was a glass on the nightstand, fetched from the kitchen by Mystique some immeasurable time ago, and Erik helped him through a slow, laboured sip, and then another.

Charles breathed a moment through the pain of swallowing before going on. He still looked infinitely less pained than the last time they’d talked. Raising the morphine back to the higher dose had been the right decision, even if this lucidity probably wouldn’t last long. “I’m a telepath, Erik.”

Erik raised an eyebrow.

Charles laughed, more of a tight cough followed by a grimace. His voice was tighter when he managed, “I don’t just broadcast thoughts, I hear them, absorb them. Without control over my mind, my friend…there is a developed skill to separating my own thoughts from those of others. When I lost that control today…I broadcast my nightmare to others, yes, but that nightmare sparked their own fears, brought their own nightmares to the surface of their thoughts, where I absorbed them.”

The nightmares of the doctor, his two granddaughters; of the scum locked behind bars up the north corridor.

“With no control to separate those heard scenarios from my own, they combined, they merged, they—the nightmares fit together, if you can imagine that, mine and—the doctor’s I would say, and some of the other men that you have imprisoned.” Charles was on a roll, the avid focus, tumbling logic that was so familiar from diner lunches explaining the finer points of obscure genetic theories and back seats explaining some anomaly in the Cerebro coordinates to the bafflement of a cab driver. “And so instead of broadcasting only my own nightmares to them, I was broadcasting their own terrors back into their minds, mingled with my own, and each other’s. Does that make—”

“Sense. Yes, it does.” Erik breathed out slowly. “The—metal pulling things underground, metal suffocating you, those images—came from others, not from you. So did the fear toward your sister.”

Charles quirked the entirely-out-of-place corner of a smile. “A sort of nightmare feedback loop.”

“Right.” Erik would decide later whether that meant anything important, but it did leave only one question. “Are you afraid of me?”

The coughing laugh again, the immediate regret at the pain shuddering through the morphine. The sickly smile, after a moment catching breath. “Well…I was confused, while I was dreaming, because I couldn’t figure out…I didn’t have the awareness, you see, the presence of mind, to know that I’d lost control—”

“You were asleep.”

“Yes, yes I was asleep,” as though the irrelevance of this should be obvious, “but—I was confused, in the dream, because I’m _not_ afraid of you, Erik. I was feeling the fears of others, and I couldn’t reconcile those fears with what I know of you.”

Was he glad? Should he be glad? Erik had no idea. He argued almost by habit. “You know that I’m dangerous. You know that I have every intention of fighting when attacked.”

“I don’t attack you.”

There was no point bringing it up, not again, but—“You did, on the beach.”

Another grimace. “You attacked first.”

“I—”

“You attacked the ships. _You_ know that I have every intention of—”

“Protecting people with no rational claim on your sympathy.”

“Protecting innocent men with no idea what’s happening to them.”

Erik shut his eyes, counselled himself to patience, reminded himself that Charles was fragile, and opened them again. “There’s no point arguing this again.”

“Peace is not lost to you, my friend.”

No point in arguing that, either—no point in saying again ‘yes, it is’, when Charles was so attached to his own delusion.

Charles looked right at him even when he was looking away, he always did, and physical weakness hadn’t changed that. Charles watched, always—Charles waited for him to look back. Charles watched Erik’s profile, and allowed, “At least…it doesn’t have to be.”

Erik stood, perfect steel bullet clasped uncomfortably tight in his fist. “I should get back.”

“To where?”

Erik wasn’t sure what Charles was asking, but he doubted it was anything he’d want to answer. “Our remaining ‘team’ are waiting for me. There’s work to do.”

“You’re a good man, Erik.” Pleading, quietly.

Erik looked down. There was Charles watching, always watching, eyes impossible as ever. “I’m glad you think so.”

“ _Be_ the better man.”

And again—and would it always be like this, now? Or had it been like this all along?—there was no point rehashing the same immovable space between them.

“I am,” Erik offered instead, and reached down to touch Charles’s face, awkwardly, pointlessly, just for a moment. Then he turned away and walked away and left, the room and the little house on the surface and when he found Azazel, the country, before anything else could break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I suppose this is the end of what I think of as part 1 of this fic (though part 2 will be considerably shorter).
> 
> I'm leaving town in 4.5 hours and won't have access to internet for a week (with the exception of my phone, which isn't terribly helpful for word processing ;D), so I won't be able to update. I *will* post a chapter as soon as I get back, on Thursday (Sept 1).
> 
> Many many many thanks to Kyrene3, Little D, nic, nantochan and tzzzz for comments on the last chapter, and to Babblebuzz for the super-exciting promise of fanarts! <3 You guys make it so much easier to write, and it's very much appreciated <3333 Thanks also to those who've left kudos, and of course to everyone for reading!
> 
> Look after Erik and his faily bullet-marble for me while I'm gone! Lol...DX
> 
> <3


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains a very one-sided, fragmented account of the foundation of Israel and the events leading up to it post-WWII, told from the point of view of a character who is ill-informed and mentally and emotionally unwell. If Israel is/can be a trigger issue for you for any reason, you might want to exercise caution. Young-Erik's impressions would not be an adequate historical account by anyone's standards; they are a character's impressions. Views expressed by characters are not necessarily the views of the author.
> 
> That covered, have a chapter :)

_March, 1949_

It was a strange, sudden decision, really, dislocating in its completeness.

The war was over. The Third Reich had been defeated, and his people were free. He’d discovered that weeks ago, though; still years after the fact, but weeks ago nonetheless. His people were free, and he was still here, wherever he was, whoever he was. They hadn’t been his people in a long time.

It was strange because he’d never really made a decision before. He didn’t quite know how to do it. He had thought about it, since he’d heard, thought about all the questions that didn’t quite fit—he had been taken as a Jew but now the Jews were free and he was still here, wherever here was. The Doktor was a Nazi but the Doktor was confusing and inconsistent. The Nazis had been defeated but the Doktor was still here, and he didn’t seem upset that the war had been lost. He’d never said anything about it. And it had happened four years ago, if these new strangenesses were true. Had they moved when the war had ended? They had moved more than once, and perhaps one of those was four years ago, or thereabouts, but it was hard to know, hard to tell. Years were only a way to count days, and days had lost most of their meaning a long time ago.

Could he leave?

That was the only question that mattered, really. If the war was over, and the Nazis had lost…did he still have to be here?

Where would he go? Back to Warsaw? Back to his father’s house in Germany? What would be left there?

The Doktor wouldn’t _let_ him go, but...could the Doktor stop him, really? What was to stop him shattering the locks? What was to stop him turning the guns on their owners?

Nothing, really. Only nothing to go back to.

And maybe…if it were true…

 _freedom…_

Erik reached the surface with power hot and disorienting in his hands—a long time since he’d used it for himself, and never like this, never power like this turned to his own will—and a damp density of blood splatter on his shirt and trousers that he knew in a purely academic way could be problematic if there were people around. Blood was very normal in the Doktor’s offices, but he remembered it being shocking, once, and if the war was over then it might be once again unusual.

He should take off his shirt, maybe. His trousers were dark, at least. It was cold, though, cold enough for snow, maybe? So long since snow. Cold enough that his shoes had left five sharp footprints in the frost, cold enough that he needed more than his thin shirt, not less—and where would he get that? Clothes came from fabric, or sometimes from stores, and he didn’t know where either of those were, and he didn’t have any money.

Erik watched the five footprints. They led to the hole in the ground, a gaping-through where he had punched an opening through a ceiling. There was a building nearby, and that would be how people usually came in. There were some other buildings, a way away, farther than Erik had seen in years—and there was the sun, low in the sky, still morning, like a half-remembered story for children who believe anything. Sun, and sky, and frost—trees, starting to show a little life.

There was a sign on the near building, but Erik didn’t know the language.

He didn’t _want_ to go back down, back underground, not with freedom so new and so bizarre, but his jaw was shaking now, the crack of teeth and the tension down the spine and up again and skin sore and blood freezing to the hair on his arms. The doktor wouldn’t be back for days yet, and everyone else was dead. He could go back in, just for a little. Just long enough to find some clean clothes, and borrow a warm coat. Take a warm coat. He wasn’t coming back here. He was leaving now. He would _take_ a warm, woollen coat all for his own.

***

 _November, 1962_

Erik preferred to work in a way that was highly methodical. He had tracked Shaw undiverted for eight and half years, working from nothing and piecing threads together and following them to new ones. Now he had a new goal, and he was confident that he could proceed toward it as logically and as methodically as he had toward the last.

The only problem with this was a flaw that he should have foreseen, but had not: the new goal, the new plan, had taken shape in his mind over roughly two months in which he’d been practically welded to Charles, and Charles was essential to both plan and goal, though more logically to the former than to the latter.

With Charles on the other side of the continent, disabled and not necessarily co-operative, the plan was fragile at best, and the goal was lacklustre. Eight and a half years, Erik had lived on a pinpoint focus, and it was uncomfortable to have to work for that, to miss its second-skin certainty.

The first day, rested and alert and with a bed in the immediate past for the first time since before Cuba, that was hard. Erik interrogated several of the Americans, unhurriedly and precisely, and Mystique and Azazel followed each lead to its termination. Records disappeared, intelligence was permanently lost. Riptide and Angel watched Erik work, a strategic move that worked precisely as he meant it to. Perhaps he had lost some of their regard in the time he had spent on Charles, but in breaking a man he was skilled and thorough, and they would not need more from him than that.

The second day, it took more effort than he liked to remain convinced of his decision not to visit Charles. He spent several hours in the morning finalising details of a test run for the back-up recruitment plan, then sent Riptide and Angel to prepare, and sent Azazel to scout a test location before he could fail in his own resolution and go to Peru instead of to the north corridor. He worked the Russians as thoroughly as he had the Americans, just a few of them, selected at random. There would be time enough to break them all. Azazel returned with the name of a small city in north-western England, and left for Russia with Mystique on his arm, and returned with paper files in hand and reports of electronic ones destroyed.

The third day, Erik read the files, American and Russian, word by word, hopes and hates and cold facts and Shaw and Charles and wild speculations. A couple more men, one language and then the other, and Erik tried not to wonder whether Charles could die in Peru without him knowing. He could, of course. Perhaps he could send Azazel without appearing overly invested. It would hardly be excessive to check whether they needed any further supplies. Charles was a valuable asset, after all.

The fourth day, an older American man went into cardiac arrest mid-interrogation. Erik left the body fluidly cuffed to its metal seat until Azazel came back from Britain—Riptide and Angel well but making no progress as yet—and then had him dispose of it in whatever way he deemed simplest. Gravity and the ocean did their work, and Erik was glad that Charles was far away.

The fifth day, Erik realised that reality had returned; an end to strangeness. He was alone, wiser than to trust his two in Britain, or Mystique, despite her care for Charles, or Azazel, despite earnest assurances from Mystique. Basic protective measures had been accomplished, but the first step to a nation—recruitment—was presently an unproductive test project in semi-urban England, and war was a matter of time. Everything was against him, and this was the reality that he trusted to be real and lasting. He was alone, and he had a single goal pin-holed in the great monotone of muck that was the world, and accomplishing it would be slow and hard and empty. But accomplish it he would, and here, now, with nothing and no one, there was nothing to disappear upon waking, nothing to shatter like dandelion fluff and boys’ fantasies—this was reality, and whatever the costs, the world he could make here would be more than a foolish dream.

***

 _March, 1949_

The strangest things were small.

The first words between free men. He waited behind walls and summoned a few coins from the pockets of people who looked warm and well-fed. Then he went into a store and bought bread, and some cheese, all for himself, and sat behind another wall and ate it in the warmth of his thick woollen coat and his heavy cloak. He bought the bread in German, which the shopkeeper understood though he spoke Swedish to the other customers. Sweden. North. Erik didn’t know much else about it.

The first few nights he huddled outside, very cold. On the fourth day, he asked whether there was a place where one could sleep, and was directed to another store, with warm drinks he didn’t know and hot food and beds, and then he needed to steal more money, but that was easy now. He paid for a bed in his own room with a lock, and it was tense, at first, uneasy and untrustable, but after the first night he unlocked the door and left again, and so he came back, and exchanged more coins for another night in the warm.

The bed in that place was not strange—he had slept in beds of many kinds—and the food was not very strange, but the drinks were, and men laughed at his surprise at ‘beer’, which he remembered the men drinking sometimes, a long time ago, his father and his uncles and the other men. Now he drank beer, and the men at the bar raised their glasses, and when he had finished a lot of beer, his head swam and small metal things, cutlery and coins, began to shiver, and the men began to shout. When he apologised, they shouted at him, and when he tried to explain, they chased him back into the cold. When he came back in after his coat, one of the men tried to put a knife in him, and Erik put it in the man instead, and then they all ran out and away. Erik left before they came back.

He left that first town before anyone could try to lock him up again. He walked along the road for part of the night, and then a man offered him a ride in a car, and he sat in a warm seat with leather instead of walking. The man asked for his name, and gave his own, and Erik was surprised when the man was a Jew but the man was not. There were a lot of Jews here, the man said, and where had Erik come from? Erik wasn’t sure, but the man didn’t throw him out. Instead he talked, quiet and loud and on and on, and Erik listened and remembered it all. There were a lot of Jews in Sweden, he said, because Sweden had taken many refugees, and because the British would not let them join the Yishuv in Jerusalem, and because Sweden was good compared to the camps in Germany, and had Erik come from there, perhaps? From a displacement camp in Germany? But the man was most excited that there was going to be a country for Jews, despite the British and the Arabs, a place that Erik half remembered ideas of from before anything, from songs he didn’t know any more, songs about going home that only made half or less of sense. Not a ghetto, the man said, not like a ghetto and not like the camps—the Jews were going home, not smuggling and hiding as they were now but free, maybe this year, maybe soon, going home to safety and the promised land of freedom.

Freedom was good, Erik agreed. Safety was good. Maybe if the Jews were going home, he could go too.

***

 _November, 1962_

On the sixth day, Charles was fine, comparatively, and Calker had all he needed, and Erik told himself that such a satisfactory report from Azazel was all that he needed to know.

Then he went to Britain, to a small city called Blackburn, where Angel and Riptide had thus far located an entirely human acrobat and a woman who, it had turned out, could not in fact speak to birds.

Erik perused Angel’s transcripts of the two interviews—brief in the first case, a whole day’s work in the second—and then copies of the lines, baits they’d cast so far, flyers and posters and classified advertisements in strategic locations.

‘Join the Circus!’ the first proclaimed in bold, curlicued letters that made Erik’s hands fist.

 _Looking for unusual skills, strange faces, bizarre acts.  
Good pay, meals and board, excellent work conditions.  
Men, women, children may apply. No experience necessary.  
Telephone to 7483._

That had been the acrobat, a young man whose hands, feet, limbs and dexterity had all on inspection been _homo sapien_. Two other ‘applicants’, a juggler and a man with puppets, had been turned away without interview. Erik honestly doubted that this particular lure would attract any adult mutants, but a child, perhaps, a child alone and hungry, a child like Mystique and Azazel and Hank and Angel must once have been, might come for an easy meal.

The classified advertisement, he hoped, might bear fruit of more particular interest. It was smaller than his palm, clipped from its first newspaper printing:

 _Do you have a problem that no one can solve?_

 _Dr. Magnus Eisenhardt  
B.Psych(Hons.) M.Psych(Clinical) PhD_

 _Specialist clinical psychologist, expert in unusual  
cases, exceptional mental skills and unexpected  
manifestations of emotion. Clinical experience  
with unique individuals worldwide._

 _Telephone to 3879 for a free, no-obligation  
first consultation._

That had brought them the bird woman, who had claimed on the telephone that she held conversations with a wide range of airborne wildlife and needed a doctor to convince her family that she wasn’t mad. Angel had been hopeful, but after a full day of ‘pre-appointment interview’, ‘Dr. Eisenhardt’s assistant’ had declined the woman's request for an appointment. The advert was yet to attract further responses.

The third branch of their initial test had received no replies as yet. It was an anonymous flyer left in hospitals, charity offices, bus stops; tacked on walls; posted on community noticeboards.

 _Are you different to your family and friends?  
Are you worried about abandonment, eviction or violence?  
Have you lost a home or job because you are not ‘normal’?_

 _There’s no need to hide.  
Telephone 4259 for food, shelter, and a helping hand to a better future._

***

 _March, 1949_

In the town where he left the Jewish man’s car with coins given freely instead of taken, Erik paid for another room, bed and window and locking door. The other thing in the room was a mirror, and that was stranger almost than beer or the car or stories of a home, because a mirror was something in his mother’s bedroom when he was very small.

When he looked in the glass, Erik knew that this was how he looked, because he knew about mirrors, but it was not simple to know—not simple because his face was a new shape, a shape that he knew with hands but not eyes, strange because his shoulders were very thick, muscles like in anatomical diagrams and he had seen them, had studied his own arms before, but never like this, by a face to match…strange because his eyes moved as he moved them, left and right, up and down, left and right, and how strange was that, how long could he watch that, that he moved these grey—or still blue, maybe, just?—eyes with little lines at one corner and shadows beneath.

He was nineteen now, grown, old enough to be free. He did not know how to be nineteen, or how to be free; he did not know much about how to make food, or how to earn lots of coins as adults did and not few coins as children do; he did not know where he might go, or how not to be chased out again, or what he should do to go back, or forward. He did know that he was nineteen, and nineteen seemed old enough that maybe, if he was careful—and he had learned to be careful, had learned that very well—maybe he could learn to know all of these things, in time.

For now, he was a Jew, wasn’t he? His parents were dead, and he had been imprisoned alone, but he still remembered things, his mother’s things, and he still had a name, a Jewish name. In the sixth town, he found a man and a woman working for the Bricha, working to take people past the British blockades, and so Erik began with them, and because there was nothing left in Germany, or in Poland, or anywhere else, he followed the quiet, secret paths to Zion.

On the fourteenth of May, the country was called Israel, and in a little house full of young men with nothing else left, in a city full of Jews, Erik cheered with the rest, and clung to it for a future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Repeating for good measure, views expressed by characters belong to characters. An unusual chapter, and harder to write in some ways, but I hope that you enjoyed it! I *think* there are 6 more chapters to go in this fic; that's not the end, though! There are more fics in this 'verse to follow this one, several of which I've already written. If people choose to keep reading then I will be very excited and grateful :))))
> 
> Comments, kudos and even just reading are all very much appreciated (though comments are particularly wonderful ;D). Thank you for reading another chapter! <3
> 
> [a short note on appropriation, at risk of being paranoid: I think that appropriation is pretty much a given in this fandom. In fact, I think that appropriation is a given in all fiction, but this fandom obviously picks a pretty hot button issue in terms of questions of appropriation. I'm not Jewish, I have no Jewish ancestry. The story I'm giving to Erik isn't a true story, nor a deeply researched composite; it's a sketchy composite that I've researched enough that I think it's broadly plausible, made more sketchy by Erik's perspective. Please do not regard it as a history lesson, nor as a gesture of disrespect toward anyone involved in the historical events to which it alludes.]


	20. Chapter 20

The first new recruit to come out of Blackburn was eight years old.

“I saw your sign. You said you pay good,” he piped in a little eight-year-old voice with a hard edge, scruffy and skinny and looking Erik straight in the eye despite the unmistakable tremble in his tiny fingers. Erik wondered whether it was the teleportation that was making the boy afraid, or the air that this must have of organised crime.

Erik did not want to militarize children, and he had a plan for this. Children would be sent to Westchester, to Charles’s estate, to be cared for and kept safe and trained until they were old enough.

This plan relied upon Hank’s and Sean’s co-operation. That would be impractical to obtain until Charles’s co-operation was secured, and that was—weeks off at the very least, possibly months.

So Azazel had brought the child back to Argentina. Milton Davey was 3’9” with dirty blonde hair, webbed extremities and a poorly controlled tendency to shift colour to match his surroundings.

Erik smiled with effort from two feet back and wished that Charles were mobile. Erik knew nothing about children.

***

Mystique spent several hours befriending the boy largely by growing webbing and changing her colour again and again to match his until he laughed. She called him Chameleon. Erik didn’t see that ‘Milton’ was likely to be a problem, given that he was a homeless urchin with no possessions, no connections and no family that cared whether he lived or died. He was eager to please, curious but cautious, and precisely what they were looking for. None of this made him less completely out of place on this base. When Mystique asked Erik as the child sat in the next room with a sandwich whether they couldn’t drop him at Westchester and just trust the boys to take care of him, Erik was tempted to say yes.

Except that, in time, Milton would make a very useful spy, perhaps a very useful assassin.

Except that, in Westchester, Hank and Sean and Alex would inculcate the boy with Charles’s dogmatic weakness.

“Not yet,” he told her. “I need you to keep him for a while.”

Wide eyes, thin lips. “I’m not—” She stared a moment, lips parted, as though he’d suggested something that defied belief. Erik was not entirely sure how Charles had put up with her for two decades. “I’m as good as the others. Better.” A furious whisper. “I didn’t come with you to look after children.”

“Like Charles looked after you?”

The anger intensifying a moment, indignation, and then the quick creep of guilt, giving way to confusion, and then—

“You came to do what needs doing, did you not?”

Mystique nodded slowly.

Erik smiled. “Then you will look after the boy until we can put him elsewhere.”

She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue. Erik didn’t really much care.

At the crux of it, this was _his_ problem: what if Charles didn’t come easily? If it was longer than months?

Erik preferred not to think it. There was a back-up plan. If Charles resisted, then there would be no Cerebro, no one with the knowledge to rebuild it unless they could get Hank on side without Charles, which seemed unlikely; but the test project could become a permanent system of recruitment. If Charles resisted, then there would be none of the technological edge that he and Hank could contribute, but aside from Cerebro that was no great loss—they had their abilities, and that should be all they needed. If Charles resisted, then there would be no non-military branch of this revolution, nowhere to send children and those poorly equipped to fight, but this was a war, and war was by nature harsh to all, not just to the strong.

If Charles resisted, then Erik would be alone again, but he had been alone a long time—in time he would forget, and reality would take him forward.

***

 _1949_

To be not-alone was a strange, terrifying thing. At newly twenty years old, in the new nation of Israel, joining the army was not so much a matter of choice as a matter of fact. There was a new world being created, and one could not be part of it unless one was willing to defend it.

Erik arrived in the Holy Land in the midst of a war that included every man—the Yishuv militarised, the Arabs furiously attempting to suppress them, the British on the way out—and with the foundation of the new Jewish state, he became a member of the new Israeli army, fighting to defend a nation from a ring of neighbours who denied its existence. He had never fought before, not really—he had raged, now and then, but usually only when instructed. He had broken out of the Doktor’s offices—things he did not think of, another world from which he did not come, and when they asked he said he’d been in the camps, in the camps like everyone else, starved and scared and half-dead, not strapped to a table under the earth well-fed and cut to pieces—but that had been a moment, an instant, a great extended sudden realisation…he had never fought before, not really, because he had never had anything to fight for.

Now…they had smuggled him out of Europe and across the ocean and the desert, these people he did not know but who welcomed him as their own, and when he had arrived they had welcomed him and given him freedom and put a gun in his hands to protect it. These were his mother’s people, those left, and he’d been too weak to protect her, too young, too small, too everything that could never be taken back but now…they all spoke together and it was belonging, rumours and hopes and mourning, and the British were gone now they said but the Arabs remained, the fury of Egypt and its allies, and Erik was not the only one of his people determined to cling to their freedom. There was nothing left for them in Europe, nothing left in the rubble of their fathers’ houses. Here they had run for a final chance, a promised land, a place for the displaced, and now...

Erik was strong—had been made strong for the Doktor’s purposes—and now he would be strong for his own purposes. Strong for these people who claimed him, for his mother’s people, for the people the Doktor had wanted to wipe from the world. Now he would be strong enough to help forge, to help defend a new land for the dispossessed; a new safety for those who had been defenceless; a new nation for those again and again cast out. Here was the memory of love and a home and the ways that life was supposed to be, and here they could have it again, maybe, surely, whispers in darkened windows; here they would make an end to the stolen past; here they would make the beginnings of a new future.

That was strange—that was all strange, family again, belonging, whispers, food and prayers and purpose shared, but none of that was the strangest thing. When one defended one’s freedom shoulder to shoulder and back to back with another man…Erik remembered friendship, an abstract concept and a few weak, fragmented memories from childhood, but that was nothing like this. It was not-being-alone, he supposed, because he could find no better words for it than that—he had been alone a long time, had been kept and tormented alone, and now he lived with others and remembered with others and mourned with others and put forth life and limb with others’ for a common cause…and when one fought shoulder to shoulder with another man…

He wouldn’t tell his secrets. He’d learned that lesson. No one needed to know what he could do. No one needed to know that the things he remembered were not the things they remembered. But sometimes…sometimes in the little closet of a room with two narrow mattresses and one candle where he slept…he wasn’t alone, and they breathed into sleep together, and they fought shoulder to shoulder and maybe, one day, maybe he would be able to tell it all.

***

 _1962_

Charles was unconscious, or possibly deeply asleep.

Erik knew that Charles was unconscious, because he’d talked at him for nearly five minutes and he hadn’t argued, and Charles couldn’t hold out that long.

If Erik felt somewhat relieved by this, he chose not to think badly of himself; Charles was intolerable, and Erik was tired, and today, this was a relief.

“If I tell you this now, will you remember when you’re awake?”

Erik spun the metal marble between his fingers, marble then bullet then four-petalled flower. “You will, if you’re just asleep. But I could convince you that you imagined it, if you don’t like it…you don’t trust your mind at the moment.”

Motionless on the bed, Charles made a low, almost inaudible sound of possibly discomfort.

“If you like it, you’ll tell me, and you’ll be disgustingly hopeful and I’ll want to change my mind just to stop you glowing so obnoxiously.” A perfect dogwood blossom, spinning slowly, faster, faster on the tip of his thumb. “And if you don’t…then you’ll tell me, or you’ll ask, and you’ll believe me if I tell you it was a dream. You’ll believe me over your memory, so long as you’re on the morphine. I’ll find another way to put it to you.”

Erik knew that there had to be a way to put the plan to Charles such that he would see sense. Charles was, in a basic way, a rational, intelligent man. There were incomprehensible depths of irrationality laid on top of that, but Charles was neither an idiot nor, when he thought clearly, a fool. So there was a way to make him understand. Persuasion was not an area in which Erik had a lot of practice; persuasion, he had found, usually worked best when accompanied by a sharp blade or possibly a bullet. But this was Charles, and it was important, and he could work it out.

He sat in the little chair from the dining room that sat by the bed and watched Charles sleep. Nothing for it but to try. He watched Charles’s eyelids, smooth, for now. “Our people deserve a place to belong.”

Charles breathed, slowly, deeply, not very quietly but not very loudly.

“I know what you hope, Charles, that humans will come to ‘tolerate’…” No. This should be completely calm. Follow an incontrovertible line of logic. This should be easy, with Charles asleep and thus unable to respond. It wasn’t. Erik hoped fervently that Charles was conscious enough for his impossible memory to function, because he had very limited faith in his own patience if he had to have this conversation with Charles awake. He tucked the once-again-bullet into the palm of his hand. “'Tolerance’ isn’t enough, Charles. If it’s possible at all. You’ve seen the results of your way. They fear us, and they hate us, and they try to destroy us. And that’s always what will happen.”

The slow stillnesses of sleep and paralysis, seeping into and through one another, uncomfortable and discomforting.

“You’re strong enough to protect yourself,” Erik pressed, inexorable, “And so am I. Not all of our kind are, and they will be tormented and slaughtered, men and women and children, and it will go on until we are all dead. Unless we can protect ourselves.” Shoulder to shoulder and back to back and the promise of a future and the promise of a nation. “We need an army, Charles. And we need a people to protect, not a scattered population surrounded by enemies. We must be united if we’re going to stand.”

This was it, this was the crux of it, and Erik spoke into the backs of Charles’s eyelids, into the flicker of his eyelashes on his flushed cheeks. “We need a nation, Charles. We need political and military authority over a piece of land where we can protect our kind. If we can locate our people and bring them to a safe place then they can protect each other. Children can be cared for. You can train them, if you like. You can do whatever you want to do. But we’ll be safe. And once we’re safe…” and this was where he needed to be careful, this was where if Charles were awake the questions would come less easy to gloss over, but Charles wasn’t awake, and maybe that was a chance, maybe if he could put it right now, so that Charles woke with the seed in him… “Once we’re safe, with a place where our kind can be safe, and free, then there’ll be the chance for—a future—for everyone.”

It rang insincere in his own ears—not even so much insincere as too saccharine and too stupid to believe from anyone. Charles would make it believable, of course—Charles would believe it with such flushing, earnest intensity that anything would seem possible. Erik couldn’t have summoned that depth of self-deception if he’d wanted to. He’d said it, though—and if Charles’s mind was still some part of what it had been through the months Erik had known him before reality had dropped back into place, then those words would be there in his memory when he woke. Perhaps that could be enough. Perhaps, for once, Charles’s penchant for hope might work to Erik’s advantage. If Charles could be made to hope that Erik’s plan would serve his own ends…

Erik sorely wished that Charles would just grow up. Failing that, though, deception would have to do. It was what he had left. It was what was necessary to keep them safe.

Erik rolled the metal marble between his fingers, and Charles slept on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry that the chapters have been taking a bit longer! That time of year, I think *fail* I'm going away for four days on Thursday but I'm going to try to post again before I go, and then when I get back :D Thanks so much to everyone who's sticking with this story; I really love hearing from you.
> 
> Thanks especially to AbandonedWorld, tzzz, Lexie, nantochan, Thanael and Niccy for their comments last chapter, and to Ghanima for her comment and for pointing out to me that ch18 wasn't showing up for anyone! Really appreciate your support :) <3
> 
> EDIT: Hey guys, sorry, not going to be able to get a chapter up before I leave. I'll try for Tuesday, though, or Wednesday latest :) Thanks as always! <333
> 
> EDIT 2: Hey wonderful people, sorry again, I know I'm a week late! Haven't had a spare second to write the next chapter, so I'm going to post the first chapter of another fic in this 'verse that I've already written. It's from earlier in the timeline, so won't spoil anything! Hope you enjoy, and I'll get the next chapter of this one up asap :) Thanks guys <3


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I know nothing about the Israeli army circa 1951. Everything herein is made up, with the occasional semi-researched name or detail thrown in for suspension of disbelief purposes ;) All opinions belong to characters, not to me, and beyond the fact that there was conflict between Israel and Syria in '51, all content is fiction :)

There is nothing in the world that lasts but hatred, and power, and only one of those will stay with one man for long.

***

In 1951, war was a way of life. War had been a way of life for nearly two years for Erik, two years of hard, proud service to a cause that mattered and a country he loved. Two years was men he’d learned to fight alongside, was men who’d taught him to fight until he’d surpassed them. Erik had the right physique for a soldier, and the endurance of a pain-dead mule. After two years, his bullets never missed, even when things seemed to be blocking their way. Erik was a good soldier among good soldiers, and he woke not alone and slept not alone and knew with the odd sort of certainty of having left another world, migrated from a universe of solitary despair and landed on the shores of a new future, that he would never be alone again.

In June of 1951 it was north, with the 12th Battalion’s Palsar, hot so that they wore fewer clothes than they should when they could, relentlessly bright so that Erik was glad his skin had burned darker two years back. It was a tight-knit knot of forty tan-skinned men shirtless and sweating in the sparse shade of stretched canvas or breathing slowly, hotly in too-warm uniforms with brown berets and sleeves rolled above the elbows and submachine guns set to rest over shoulders. It was a sweating, heat-heavy knot of men whom Erik loved, a couple he’d fucked, not here, one on a crazy posting ten months ago when the whole four men there behind enemy lines in Syria had vowed never to tell wives, girlfriends or anyone else, one on leave in Tel Aviv not yet six months back, two straight weeks of secrecy and wildness and no orders. The rest he loved like brothers, men he’d lived alongside and killed alongside, and had every intention of finishing this posting alongside, then going home alongside and having a long cold drink and another glorious week of leave.

When the ambush fell, he hardly hesitated a moment before stopping the mortar shells in midair.

When one ambusher made it up to the roadside with enough life left to get his hand to the trigger of his semi-automatic, Erik didn’t hesitate to hurl him down the road.

When the noise died away, and the enemy was dead, and the fighting ceased, five tan-skinned men with uniform sleeves rolled above their elbows stared as each unexploded mortar shell floated harmlessly to rest by the truck, ready to be collected. The silence echoed, and enemy bodies leaked their contents into the sand, and five men stared at each other, one and then another, wide eyed, tense lined, searching; scared.

By the time the last mortar shell rested safely on the ground, all five men stared at Erik.

***

When Charles woke up, he was alone.

The room was familiar, but only vaguely. That was perturbing. Charles's mind was never vague. The room was small, with white walls and sparse furniture. An empty chair by the side of the bed he faced. A closed door. He remembered it from earlier, he thought. Maybe.

There was no one here. No one here, or in the next room, whatever it was, or in his immediate range, or even when he stretched his thoughts, in—

The bright, clear image of a woman shifting fluidly in age, hair blonde and then grey and then blonde again, and two young women who were also little girls, who—

Calker.

Charles drew his thoughts in that direction more carefully. It took an effort to reach far enough to find him, but he was there. He was praying. Charles could see the images, the focus of the thought, most easily, but if he tried he could hear something of the words, or the way they sounded in Calker’s head, a quiet, dignified pleading. A man trusting to God to get him home.

There was no one else. All the way to the furthermost edges of his range and nothing, not another human soul. He and Calker, in the middle of nowhere.

Well, that was what they’d discussed, wasn’t it? Somewhere he could heal without worrying about who might lose their minds in his broadcast dreams? Certainly there was no risk here, wherever it was, of accidentally brushing the mind of another.

It felt astonishingly, disablingly alone.

It was unnerving, too, not to know where he was. Although...Peru. Yes, Peru, he was in Peru. How did he know that? Azazel had brought him here earlier, he knew that, and Azazel must have thought about their location, and Charles must have heard it. He tried to pin down the trip here, the split second jump, the moment of landing in a new place. It came slowly—glass, great walls of windows with the moon outside, and Erik had said—yes, Erik had been here, earlier. Erik has told him where they were. A desert in Peru. They'd seen the sea was out the windows, and Erik had said that the view was beautiful when it was light. The Peruvian coast. Erik could still be here, wearing the helmet, or he could be gone. Charles had no way to know. Not whether Erik was here, or what he was thinking, or planning, or feeling. No way to know the things beneath his voice, which very often lied. No way to know Erik, who he knew best of all, and that, unreasonable as it was, still felt more alone than being stranded here in the midst of the great vast Peruvian nowhere and no one.

He had managed to stop—two days ago?—trying to sit up every time he woke up, and that, at least, was a relief. There was still the mental impulse, the need to stand, and then to walk; to open the door and explore his surroundings. To not be on his back. The uncontrolled physical response to that, though, the automatic attempt to follow through, had fallen, with some effort, under his control. It was painful not to try, but it was physically painful _to_ try, and more painful than anything, almost, to fail. To feel…nothing happen.

So Charles lay in bed, on his left side, and tried not to think about the fact that this nothing, all of this nothing, this stillness and stillness and nothing at the end of all the places the most basic learnings were supposed to be…that nothing was ever going to happen again.

For an hour, and then two, and three—

— not a voice and not a sound and not a thought but his own, turning over each other, turning over themselves —

For four and a half hours, Charles lay in bed as

nothing  
happened.

As the fifth hour crept closer, there was a sound from beyond the closed door.

Charles was almost not certain he hadn’t imagined it, except that he had great faith in his mind, even disabled as it was right now by drugs. Sure enough, there were footsteps then, quiet, approaching. When the door opened, Charles already knew who was on the other side, because Erik seemed very unlikely to have given the helmet to anyone else.

For a moment, they looked at each other.

Erik took a step into the room. “You’re awake.”

Charles licked his lips, and tried without much energy to think of something to say, beyond the obvious. Nothing came to mind.

The obvious, then. “I can’t move.”

Erik frowned, more deeply than he had been, then, smoothly as water after a stone, evened his expression. “Yes, you can. Not your legs, but the top half of your body is fine. The brace is limiting it at the moment.”

Charles felt rather ill, but ignored it.

Erik took a few steps closer, rested a hand on the back of the empty chair. “Do you remember?”

The extent of his injuries? The source of his injury? Why he was here? Asking seemed too likely to lead to a fight, and Charles wasn’t sure he could care enough right now to fight. The top half of his body was fine, Erik said. Well.

“I suppose I should be grateful.”

It was a hard grimace in the words, not the patient one that surfaced sometimes when they were particularly at odds. It was a look Erik wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on Charles. He tried not to think that was inevitable, given the circumstances. Charles wasn’t other men, and he didn’t respond like other men. Erik chose honesty mostly for lack of anything else to say. “I’m grateful that you’re alive.”

“So you’ve said.”

Even the grimace was gone. Charles looked tired. Tired, and sad, and a little angry.

Charles felt all of those things also, but mostly, just…

nothing.

He tried to twitch his toes, and nothing happened.

He tried to bend his knees, and nothing happened.

He tried to tense his thighs, and nothing happened.

In the midst of some long stretch of nameless hours, he thought about the dirtiest fantasies he could summon up, and tried to get turned on, and nothing happened.

So much…nothing.

There was nothing there, nothing below his waist, a great dead weight of nothing where half of him had been. And it wasn’t half of him—it wasn’t half of his mind, it wasn’t half of the part of him that mattered, he knew that, he did, but…it didn’t feel that way.

The next day, Erik didn’t come. Calker came every twelve hours or so, to help him turn over in his bed, avoid pressure sores. Calker came when he was summoned, the reach of Charles’s mind out toward its only answer, for more morphine, or food, or water, though late on what Charles thought might have been Thursday, Calker came with a stern frown and practically force-fed him, when Charles had felt far too empty for food for at least a day or so.

The next day, Erik did come, and opened the door, and they looked at each other.

After some time, he sat on the seat and asked, “Calker says you’re not eating.”

Charles looked at Erik’s eyes, and was sure they probably hadn’t changed, but it took effort to see past lashes and pupils and iris and retinas to whatever something more the mind could summon when everything in his head was silence, and effort was… “I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Three days later, Erik stood in the doorway, and they looked at each other.

Charles looked at the edges of the helmet, and the metal clasp of Erik’s belt, and the cords of muscle in his neck. Things, just things, all things.

Erik looked at him.

Charles licked his dry lips. “I can’t move.”

Erik didn’t say anything, and walked to the chair, and sat on it, and looked at Charles.

Charles looked at him, and at the door, part-way open, and at his own hands on the bedsheet.

Nothing happened.

***

By the side of a road in nowhere on a map somewhere between what was definitely Israel and what was definitely Syria, one brown-bereted man raised his gun.

Erik blinked.

Another glanced uncomfortably between the steady barrel and where it was pointed. His eyes were wary. “What the hell?”

It was not directed at the owner of the gun.

The third man shifted his weight in the loose sand-dust-dirt that made the roadside. “Hey…” he frowned without much conviction in the direction of the readied weapon. “Hey, Naveh, just…”

“You saw it.”

Erik lowered his hands slowly to his sides.

The fourth man made a poor effort at looking unperturbed. “What the hell was that, Lensherr?”

Erik eyed the pile of unexploded shells. He could have sent them flying less obtrusively in the other direction, but his control was poor when he couldn't see his target, and he wasn't certain what was in that direction if he couldn't control how far the shells flew. He could have floated them down off in the scrub the ambush had come from, but there was half of a hospital in Tel Aviv full of children missing limbs from unexploded ammunition by roadsides.

He knew these men. He trusted these men.

He looked from one face to another. “I’m sorry to have alarmed you.”

“You…” the fifth man appeared to be in shock, pointing at the pile of shells and mouthing words that mostly didn’t sound.

Erik pushed down the rush, not quite panic, but more panic than anything else, welling up in the space where the secret had been. He searched for the least shocking explanation. “I had to stop them hitting us.”

“Right.” The fourth man, Meir Eshel, bulky and mostly bluster, with half a tense chuckle of laughter. “So you just…”

“I can manipulate magnetic fields, sometimes,” Erik provided, bluntly.

“Never thought to mention that before?” The second man, standing just to Erik’s right, David Kochavi; voice hard and shoulders set firmly side by side with the first, the pointed gun, a man named Gabi Naveh who Erik had once loved feverishly and exhaustedly in a hut in Syria.

Erik kept his voice steady. “People don’t always react well.”

“Well…” Eshel trailed off with an uncomfortable mix of uneasy-almost-mirth and concern.

Naveh took a step forward, gun still at aim. “We should return to base immediately and report. Command should know about this. Someone stop gaping and secure him.”

Erik’s teeth set tight and painful. Eshel looked like he’d been dropped in the middle of an ocean. “It’s Erik! We’re not going to tie him up. Don’t be—”

“You give orders now?”

The broad, blunt man shrugged massively, took his own step forward. “Erik’s the highest ranked of us, not you.”

“Erik’s a freak.”

“A freak who’s been lying to the army,” Kochavi added.

Erik listened to that repeating itself echo on echo on record scratch in his mind while the last of their squadron, a tall, fairly recent arrival named Avi Shaham, still apparently unable to formulate words, fetched rope and cloth and cuffs and then helped Kochavi “secure” Erik, wrists tight behind and a bag over the head; an enemy prisoner, or a traitor.

Erik didn’t fight. He could destroy the cuffs easily enough if he had to, and he didn’t need his hands to use a blade on the rope. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want any of this. Only three of the five men in his squadron seemed hostile. One of those, though a good man, had been verging on hostile toward him since they’d come back from Syria the better part of a year ago. They could go back to base, and Gabi could report what he liked, and maybe Erik could work something out with the Seren. There was no reason to assume that others would turn on him. The knowledge could be kept within the Palsar, and he trusted these men, he’d put his life on the line for these men…

They left him sitting on the ground, leaned against a pack with a bag tied over his head while they inspected the minimal damage to the truck. Eshel was still arguing with Gabi and Kochavi, a series of moderately outraged objections as they moved away from Erik and then from time to time a few words loud enough for him to hear as they replaced one massive punctured tyre. He was a good soldier among good soldiers, and he heard the almost-silent footsteps a foot or two before they reached him.

Uri Peled, not yet nineteen years old, hissed a plea for silence as Erik tensed.

Erik felt the man lower himself to the ground behind. “Peled?”

A pressure on the bonds around his wrists, then the rope was cut. “How did you know?”

Erik didn't shake the ropes off, didn't risk rattling the chain still there. “You're the only one who didn't say anything.” He spoke quietly. “And I can hear the others by the truck.”

Peled answered in a whisper. “You should get out of here.”

“Why would I do that?”

The cuffs came away silently, unlocked. “The others…Naveh took a swing at Eshel just before, and David almost raised arms at him, just for defending you. Avi’s convinced you’re a demon and I’m not sure Naveh and David don’t agree.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Didn’t say it was fair.” Erik pressed his eyelids tightly together as the bag slipped over and off his head then blinked once, twice. Uri whispered furiously. “They’re not in their right minds. I don’t know, Sir…I don’t see that you’ve done anything wrong, but I don’t think everyone would agree with me. I think you should get out while you can.”

Erik flexed his fingers behind his back. No one could see them for now, but if one of the others came around this side of the truck, it would be easier for Peled to explain the bag being off than Erik’s arms being free. “I’ve fought alongside Gabi for two years. I’ve fought alongside a lot of the men back at base for that long.”

Uri shrugged.

Erik watched the side of the truck and tried not to feel anything. “What are you going to do?”

An uneasy frown. “They think you’re a demon, Segen Lensherr. If you can just…wait a few minutes until I’m back over there…they’ll believe you escaped yourself…”

Escaped.

From his brothers, from men he’d lived for and been ready to die for.

Erik nodded once. “Get back to the others.”

Uri stood swiftly. He glanced from the truck back to Erik. “I’m sorry. This isn’t right.”

Erik watched him walk back to the vehicle, then around to the other side. He counted eight minutes before he stood, long enough that they wouldn’t remember that Peled had been gone.

Then he extended one hand, and thought about the ambushers, about how well he’d made himself fit in here, how suddenly they’d destroyed that; he thought about Gabi, disgust, revulsion, “Erik’s a freak”; he thought about things he’d stopped thinking about, summon the rage, feel the rage, breathe the rage, own the rage, and five long, hateful years of learning that so well—

The truck rose like a tipsy balloon off the road, up, and up, until they could see each other beneath it, Erik and the three men who thought he was a demon and the two who didn’t now but might, for all he knew, might one day in the future.

He wasn’t interested in killing them. Erik didn’t kill Israeli soldiers, didn’t kill his people; Erik killed enemies, only enemies, killed the men who’d hurt his mother and tortured him for five long years and the men here in another part of the world who’d taken up where the first had left off…

He just had to scare them. He just had to make them stay quiet.

The truck crashed down with a sound like nothing else, really, not air raids or gunshots or bodies falling like soft, tender things. It sounded like metal, that was all. A great angry thing of metal.

They ran around it with guns pointed, the three of them, Eshel and Peled more slowly, unarmed, watching, by the side of the road.

Erik twisted the barrels of the guns, one by one, to face their owners. Gabi dropped his before it could twist the full way back on itself; Shaham dropped his before Erik had so much as looked at it. Their knives pulled easily enough from their belts, after a moment’s resistance where they were strapped in place. It was two years since Erik had made regular use of his powers, but he’d honed his control of a bullet to an artist’s precision, and that was training enough. Three knives hovered by their owners’ throats as Erik stared them down in the middle of the road.

Nothing either way for maybe twenty miles but the leaky bodies in the scrub.

By the side of the road, Eshel coughed. “Now, Erik…”

“I have done you no wrong.” Erik took a moment’s breathing to calm the nausea making the pit of his stomach contract. “Without me the truck would have been hit and you would have been wounded or killed.”

Kochavi spat in the dirt, throat sucked in tight away from the knife.

Erik held his control. “I’m not a traitor. I’m going to leave here, and you’re going to go back to base and report that I was killed in the ambush. You are never going to say a word to anyone about what you saw here.”

“You should be hunted down.” Kochavi again, brave or foolish.

Both, Erik knew. These weren’t strangers. Brave and foolish and with a good sense of humour, and apparently willing to hate a man for…Erik didn’t really know what.

He looked each man in the eye, the three on the road, the two watching. “I know you. I know your families’ names, the places you’ve lived, the ways you think. If you talk, I will find you. Do you understand?”

Eshel glared balefully, eyes narrow beneath his big forehead. “You don’t need to threaten us, Erik. Not Uri and me. We haven’t forgotten what loyalty means.”

But Erik had fought two years or close to alongside two of the three men with knives to their throats, and he knew what loyalty meant.

There is nothing in the world that lasts but hatred, and power, and only one of those will stay with one man for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Hope you guys enjoyed the other story! Last chapter of that will be up very shortly (probably tomorrow), just putting this one up while I have a minute! Nine days out from my thesis submission now, so getting close :S Next chapter of *this* fic will be...a week or so. Back to updating more frequently once the thesis is in :D Thanks for sticking with me, comments are always very much appreciated <3
> 
> EDIT: Oh, and all of my endless thanks to Shaliara, kongjingying, lexie, draco22 and Kyrene for comments on last chapter, know I haven't replied to some of you yet, your comments still make life much better, my brain is just full of thesis XD Muchly muchly appreciated <3333


	22. Chapter 22

Nine days after he arrives in Peru, Charles realises that it is the second week.

There’s a clock in the room but not a calendar, and if he sleeps through a part of the day, it’s hard to know whether it’s ante or post meridiem. There are no windows. He’s not sure if he misses the sun. He thinks that if there were a window, he might hate the sun, stupid and bitter and childish as he knows that is.

He wants to be stupid and bitter and childish. He wants to hate everything. He wants everything to hate him back. He wants there to be something here for him to hate, and is glad there’s not, because Charles knows himself, and he knows that if someone were here, a fragile thing of flesh and brittle bones, full of thoughts, of hates and loves and passions and weaknesses and wants, then he couldn’t hate it, because he’s never been able to hate. _How can you not have learned to fear?_ , Erik had asked, a lifetime ago, standing on two legs in his firelit study, but he’d meant ‘how can you not have learned to hate?’, and hadn’t he been right? Charles could never hate the men who beat him and left his father to die and killed his mother and tore his life to pieces, and that’s the end of it, at the end of it all. If he could hate, then he could have hated Erik, or he could have hated the scared, ignorant men on the ships; he could have hated Moira; he could have hated it all too much to be there. Instead, he’s here, lying immobile on the ninth day in a room with no windows and trying so hard to hate here while he still can, before some living breathing mind comes back, before Calker drifts up from wherever it is he hides away from Charles’s dreams, and reminds him that hate has never been one of his talents.

On the morning of the ninth day, before Charles knows that it’s the ninth day, Erik visits—not for the first time, but for the first time since the week tipped over. It’s the ninth day, he says, and then Charles knows that it’s the ninth day. He could take Charles out to the other rooms, he says, see the sun, see the ocean. Charles doesn’t want to see the ocean. He doesn’t want to see the ocean now and hate it and never be able to forget that hatred when he’s past this.

He will be past this. He knows he will be past this, because he has passively studied the minds of men for twenty-nine years and almost everyone gets past almost everything, if they manage to live through it.

Does he want to get past this? That he’s not sure of, but it will happen nonetheless, he knows, with some uneasy quicksilver mix of dread and not-quite-hope, something long and nauseating in between the man on death row and the man awaiting parole. Charles is awaiting the end of caring, or the end of remembering, or the end of mourning, and he could probably understand which if he tried, but he doesn’t want to try. He doesn’t want the capacity to understand everything, not today, not tomorrow. He doesn’t want to understand, and he doesn’t want to accept.

On the tenth day, Erik offers again. Charles raises an eyebrow. “And how will you do that? My back hasn’t healed enough for a chair. I’m very fragile, Erik.”

“Your back is held together with metal. I can hold it in place.” Erik’s tone is brusque—trying not to be annoyed, because Charles is injured, but sympathy doesn’t come easily to Erik, or perhaps at all. “Do you want to leave this room or not?”

Charles doesn’t look at Erik—he looks at the clock, the clock that tells him it is almost five o’clock p.m. on the tenth day, or that it’s 5, and Erik has told him that it’s the evening, and that it’s the tenth day, and that the sun is setting over the ocean, falling into the ocean, dying in fire over the waves and that it’s beautiful, that great dying thing. This great dying thing. Charles wonders, sometimes, whether his mind is dying, slowly, trapped inside this body now, whether that’s why he sometimes feels like he’s more or less rapidly losing his mind. He doesn’t really smile. “You can hold me together.”

Erik doesn’t try to catch his gaze. “You’re already held together. But if you want to move around, I can hold the rods in place, and the brace. I’ve been learning them. I know the shapes in relation to each other and your body. I’m confident, if you want me to help you out of this broom closet.”

“You could rip me apart.”

Erik’s voice is just a little terse. “I’m confident, Charles. I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t. I didn’t try when you were first here for a reason, and now—”

“If you wanted to, I mean.” Charles does smile then, serene, endlessly serene, because the hatred here is so knotted and impossible that he can soak in it and yet give up on it altogether, or has, at least, in a tired, empty, counting-passing-seconds sort of a way. “You could rip me apart, if you wanted to.” It’s always been easy to tell the truth to Erik, because the truth is all he’s ever needed to hear; because Charles has never had to hesitate to hurt him. Certainly not now. “I could rip your mind apart, if you took off that helmet,” though he wouldn’t, still, he knows that, “and you could rip my body apart in any given moment.” Charles is almost glad, in a sickened sort of way, that Erik doesn’t know, or trust—because what would he hate then, if he could feel all the hurt that must, logically, still be simmering behind Erik’s stupid hard skull?

Erik watches the wall for more than a moment, then the side of Charles’s face. “I’m not going to take of the helmet.”

“Are you going to rip me apart?”

“Why would I do that?”

Charles doesn’t shrug, because he can’t, but that’s what’s in his face, something bitter and too tired to care. “Haven’t you already?”

Erik doesn’t come back for three days, to Charles’s knowledge, but he stands at the bedroom door when Charles is sleeping. It’s a thing he couldn’t do before, when his thoughts would float in upon Charles’s dreams and Charles would wake with a smile. Now he can stand and watch, watch Charles’s upper body twitch unconsciously against the brace, watch Charles’s lower body not, watch Charles’s face contort in a dozen and then another dozen agonies and his breath rise and fall with everything but a smile. He didn’t do this. He didn’t mean to do this. He _didn’t_ do this—she did, the CIA bitch, the woman who shot the gun. He shot no one. He produced no bullet. She shot Charles, and she is to blame. He would never hurt Charles, and he hasn’t hurt Charles, and Charles doesn’t blame him, not really.

Erik’s not sure whether that’s true or not, and neither is Charles.

***

Finding work in Tel Aviv was not hard. Erik stopped using his own name, but no one looked closely enough to realise it, no one doubted his story. No one cared, really, whether Magnus Eisenhardt might or might not be the name he had been born with, because this was a place forged of war in the aftermath of war on a history of thousands of years of war, and who and what he was was clear enough. He had the look of the military, the hair-cut, the tan, the scars, the bunched muscles, the way of walking and of looking from one side to another, the way of driving, of speaking, of eating, of picking things up. He had the language of the military and the eyes of the military and that was as good as a passport.

For two weeks he hid, at first, left his apartment, hid in short stay hostels, slept a night on the street. For another two weeks after that, after he properly ended his lease and took a new one, he sat at the window and watched the street, alert to every noise, burning his savings rather than taking a job. After a month, he applied for work at a handful of places that wouldn’t question a veteran, and took a job as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital a district over from his new flat.

He was twenty-three, and looked older, and looked at people like he was a hundred years old, and no one asked questions. He was efficient and hard-working, and didn’t show up late or cause trouble. He wheeled beds down hallways, and took measurements when nurses were overworked. He delivered medications and sometimes meals. He stared down patients until they took their dosage, until they finished their meals, until they took their rest. He held down patients while doctors used needles or held open eyes or spoke calmingly and he hated them, and he hated the patients and he hated himself.

They paid him the rent for his apartment, and plenty to eat enough, and he didn’t need anything else. He ate breakfast in the morning and went to work, and worked, and went home, and ate, and slept. He spun the Nazi silver coin that meant nothing real and fixed nothing at all over and around each finger and back again and hated it instead of hating the doctors and the nurses and the patients and the people on the street and the neighbours in the next apartment. He watched the coin spin perfectly, ceaselessly around each finger and hated it instead of hating the men who had betrayed him, instead of hating the everything he’d lost.

Erik Lensherr was twenty-three, absent without leave from the military, noted, somewhere in a cardboard box, for his distinguished service during the war here; noted, somewhere in another cardboard box, in a thousand handwritten details, for an unusual child’s responses to torture in a madman’s basement in a madman’s war there. Magnus Eisenhardt was twenty-six, older than the man anyone might be looking for, with a little new facial hair and hard eyes, noted nowhere for anything.

Most of the time, Erik was dully sure that neither man really existed any more than the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the extended disappearance; I am properly back now, and there should be an update roughly every two days, uncooperative characters allowing XD Next chapter is mostly written, and will be up some time on Monday at the latest. All of my thanks to Kyrene for comments on last chapter :) <3 And thanks to everyone who has left kudos on this and on Golden since I last posted! See you next chapter!


	23. Chapter 23

On the fifteenth day in Peru, Dr. Calker didn’t leave Charles’s box-cage-deathbed of a bedroom after his usual morning check-up. Charles drifted into sleep some time before noon and Calker was gone, out of range of stray dreams, when he woke.

Half an hour later, though, he was back, skulking awkwardly around the corners of the room until Charles asked whether something was wrong. He disappeared, then, but not beyond the reach of Charles’s mind; flickering perceptions, positions, the startling beauty of ocean meeting desert in the full sun, the insurmountable distance of the ocean between here and New Jersey. Charles almost spoke in the man’s mind, corrected his geography, and barely stopped himself short; Erik had promised the man’s safety only so long as he did not know their location, and it was unnerving that he’d forgotten that. Charles Xavier did not forget.

He drew his mind back, watched the second hand _thk_ , _thk_ , _thk_ around the clock face, and floated like a cool drink after a month of thirst on the surface of the doctor’s mind, a feather on the swell, too light to share emotion—just present enough to dream in the doctor’s imaginings of deserts in Africa.

At twelve-forty, by the clock on the wall, Calker came once more to loiter in the doorway. He smiled thinly at Charles, stood a minute, asked how he was feeling, nodded at the answer, stood some more, then drifted away again, just as far as the lounge. At twelve-fifty he was back. When, at one p.m., Calker’s head came into view for the third time in thirty minutes, Charles felt certain that a persistent habit was forming. It was a testament to how quickly he had become unused to the human mind that it took him until 1:10p.m. to realise that Calker was loitering inside his telepathic range on Erik’s orders.

His kneejerk reaction to that was so entirely conflicted that, with a vicious sense of being entirely sick of himself, he ignored it in favour of the purely practical. “You can ignore him, you know.”

Calker looked confused for several long moments, then—“My—” he gestured uneasily toward his head.

Charles smiled thinly.

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Calker hedged.

“I won’t let him harm you.”

The doctor looked uncomfortable. He started toward speech several times before—“Can you stop him?”

It was not a question that Charles had ever had reason to ask. As a child he’d known that no, he couldn’t stop anyone. Since his early teens, that had changed. Now, the question threw him, and _that_ was something that quite simply never happened to him. He tried to think honestly about the question. It was several seconds before he could admit, “No. No, I suppose not.” He couldn’t stop Erik. He could ask him to stop, and maybe…but…Charles looked Calker in the eye, tried fervently not to enjoy being able to feel the fear behind his gaze just because it was _something_ to feel. “I think…I don’t think he’d—but no. No, you should do as you think best.”

Calker kept his spot on the edge of the room, apparently unwilling to occupy Erik’s chair, and Charles let him, and told himself that he was only respecting the doctor’s choice.

Calker was there whenever Charles was awake. It was never more than five or six minutes once he woke, and Charles wondered without much interest whether Calker spent all the time that Charles slept watching the feed from the little camera in the corner of the ceiling. Calker slept in the lounge, and Charles skimmed his dreams like a kingfisher, free and unbroken and immersed in the dance of a man’s unconscious.

Charles felt more awkward about this arrangement by the hour, and then by the minute. Once he was aware that the doctor’s mental presence was Erik’s doing, the reason was not difficult to grasp. Erik was, not without reason, concerned about the possible degradation of Charles’s powers. Whether that concern was selfless or otherwise Charles had no way to know, and was certain that he didn’t want to. Either way, it wasn’t an unreasonable concern. It wasn’t his powers, really, but—telepathy was how Charles lived, how he’d always lived, how he communicated, how he approached the world, and he had, he thought, been slowly losing his mind being without it. The idea of being wholly isolated had been unimaginable, and now….

But Calker was a problem. For the first day, for two days there were errant thoughts to read, slow processes of logic, worries, memories, dreams, surface things. Futile attempts to think about nothing. Barely guilt-inducing attempts to imagine flimsy mental walls. After two days, though, the shape of Calker’s mind, of the surface of his mind, was so familiar, so known and understood in every detail… Calker would enter the range of Charles’s telepathy minutes after he woke and that surface, the banal thoughts, the passing wonders were transparent and insubstantial as air above the deeper things, the more solid stuff of the mind. Worse than that, really, those thoughts whose shape he knew so much better than he should drew him in, welcomed him, and he followed them down to the places lying quiet beneath the swift flow of everyday thought and feeling, to the still water, to the places he had no right to be.

On the third day, it was hard, very hard, not to know all of the fears beneath Calker’s thoughts, all of the deeper memories, all of the things that make a man tick at the core of him from minute to minute and day to day.

He should say no; it was simple, surely. He should _stop_ because this was his gift and he controlled it, he’d always controlled it—he’d made poor decisions with it at times, yes, but they’d been his decisions, and now he should decide to stay out of Calker’s mind, to respect the man who was here to heal him enough not to idly explore his most closely guarded secrets, the places he hid even from himself…

On the fourth day, it was near impossible to stay away from the locked places, from the places where doors were closed and Charles had never chosen to go without permission.

He was alone, utterly alone, more isolated than he’d ever been in his life and all around him in miles and miles of nothing was a great lack, a vast silence, an emptiness that reached back at him like so many singularities at the end of thought.

He was alone, silent, so silent, terrifyingly, tearingly silent but for this one man, this one oasis that had appeared in all the endless echoing silence—this one expanse of things to know and be and feel surrounding him, floating in past every well-intentioned barrier he set around himself and he _knew_ Calker, and knew him more, and as the week wound into its second half he knew the doctor as well as he had known almost anyone in his life, better than he knew Raven, as well as he’d known anyone but Erik.

Calker’s mind was deep and human and life-sustaining, glorious in its endless complexity, a place to be and not to be in all of the nothing outside of him.

It was wrong, and Charles hated himself, and he hated Erik, and it was almost, almost worse than having no one, the tremendous guilt of his power every time the man climbed the stairs into his range, every time he knew the doctor’s thoughts better than the doctor did, every time he knew that he knew the every emotion of every memory the man treasured better than Calker had known them in years…but not quite, not quite worse, and that was the worst of it, the worst of it all, knowing that it wasn’t worse, knowing that he was glad that the doctor was here because the isolation, the isolation, the nothing and nothing and nothing and dreaming thoughts for the ocean and dreaming fury behind the distant sounds of the waves and dreaming a voice for the clock because silent silent silent silent silent was like a drum beat tearing through his skull and ripping his mind to shreds…

Calker remembered the sun dappling through the leaves of a green, green tree by the eaves of a graceful sort of house in a leafy, sunny, graceful place with the shape of childhood, and Charles followed him there.

***

“Erik Lensherr!”

Erik had turned to the name before he had time to think not to.

“Huh.” A spreading grin. “It is you.”

The man at the other end of the corridor was shorter than Erik, obviously military, sandy-blonde hair, friendly, open face. Calev Dayan, Erik remembered. Twenty-one now, he thought. Calev hadn’t been on Erik’s last deployment, but they’d served together more than a year. Years ago—Erik wasn’t sure how many. They’d been friends, in a basic sort of way. They’d been on first names.

Erik stood very still—the old, animal instinct, as though standing still might fool anyone.

“I heard you were dead!” The man was walking briskly toward him, still beaming. He wore civvies, and maybe he was recently discharged, or maybe he was just on leave. “Am I glad to see you!”

He reached Erik—clapped him on the back.

Erik managed a thin smile; returning the gesture was beyond him right now.

Calev’s smile dropped a little. “What happened? You’re the last guy I would have expected to go AWOL.”

And finally, finally, Erik managed a reasonable response. A little widening of the eyes. “AWOL? Not me, Calev. Honourably and properly discharged. You heard wrong.” An understated laugh, a belated clap on the man’s shoulder. Thank God almighty that his false name card was turned the wrong way around on its string around his neck. “It’s good to see you. You’re done too?”

And that was all it took. A small shake of the head, “No, no, I’m still in, just on leave for a few days, visiting my sister in here.” The smile wavered at that, but it was back. He’d bought the lie.

Erik escorted Calev Dayan down the hall to the appropriate ward, shook his hand, promised they’d catch up for a drink before Calev was deployed again.

He didn’t let himself think again until he was in a ward of patients too drugged to know the difference.

Would Dayan go back and ask questions? Innocently spread the word that Erik Lensherr was not in fact dead? Lead the army straight here?

He would have to find another job. He couldn’t stay here. A couple of days should be fine, but he should start looking for somewhere else tonight…he couldn’t use a reference from here, that could be followed. Find somewhere entirely new, then. He’d have to get a new apartment, too.

But what then?

Erik checked IV drips mechanically.

It had been a year, almost. Not quite twelve months. In a new place, another apartment, another menial job, would it be any longer?

The storage room, next on his round; check each lock against tampering. Plenty of patients who might patiently work at a lock for a chance to retrieve something that could easily end a life.

Tel Aviv was full of people he knew. Not compared to the larger population, but he’d been careful here, kept his eyes open, kept quiet, changed his appearance, a little, and what good had it done?

A metal framed bed to wheel down a hall, a sobbing, thrashing man strapped down, and were his memories worse than Erik’s? Perhaps. Erik had watched his mother die, and Erik had been tortured, but Erik hadn’t watched his mother tortured. That might be worse.

He should leave Tel Aviv. It was the only logical solution. Tel Aviv was too big a city, too central, and he’d been a fool to think he could hide here forever. Somewhere smaller, more remote, more obscure, somewhere people didn’t come—but every man goes home, or almost every man, and every town is Israel had men in the service…

A little jug of something like infant food, halfway to liquid and packed with nutrients. Hold a woman’s nose until she opens her mouth, pour the food in, wait until she swallows.

Nowhere in Israel was empty of the army. Israel fought for its own survival, and there was nowhere in Israel beyond the army’s reach.

At the end of a day, Erik took his name card, Magnus Eisenhardt with a straight-faced photograph, from around his neck and put it in his pocket. He hung his ring of keys—locked wards, storage lockers, drug cabinets—on its loop. He nodded stoically but genially to the patient middle-aged woman behind the reception desk. He walked home.

Today, Erik opened the door to his apartment and surveyed what little he would need to pack. His few clothes, bed sheets. His military sleeping bag. He wrapped a few plates in a jacket, stuffed a few cups with socks. It all fit easily into his rucksack. It took less than half an hour to clear the place.

The landlady here had been good to him, had taken him in with no recommendations and no papers and always kept the plumbing in good repair. He left the next two weeks’ rent just inside the door and locked it. He put the keys through the little slot of her mailbox on the way out.

Then Erik walked to the bus stop, caught two buses to the port, and boarded a boat to leave Israel the same way he’d arrived.

***

On Charles’s nineteenth day in his coastal sickbay, Erik visited in the early morning. Charles was awake; Calker was asleep in the front lounge. His dreams were a silkscreen, familiar as the chair by the bed. The desires beneath them were intimately understood. Calker was sleeping, and didn’t see Erik arrive, and so neither did Charles. Erik opened the bedroom door and Charles felt ill.

For ten seconds, twenty, a minute, they stared at each other. Astonishing, how quickly one could cease to know a man.

Charles swallowed around the dryness of his throat. “You have to send him home.”

Erik blinked. “Calker?”

“Please.”

Erik shut the door behind him. “You need a doctor, Charles. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m healing. I’ll be fine.”

Erik sat down in the chair and all was the same as a month ago, and everything was different. “Has something happened?”

Had something happened? Not really. But it had, in his mind, increasingly in the doctor’s, and that mattered, the _mind_ mattered to him in a way that perhaps it never could to Erik. Perhaps he should have realised that months ago. Charles searched for something that Erik would understand. “I’m taking over his mind.”

Erik looked blank—Erik was good at looking blank. “Am I supposed to care?”

“Not intentionally, Erik. I’m losing _my_ mind.”

Erik crossed his legs. “You haven’t had trouble with control while awake in the past.”

“I haven’t been isolated in the past.” Charles took a breath, made himself calm. Erik did not respond to anger, or to accusations.

“This is for your own good. I thought we—”

“I know.” An abortive attempt at calming hands. Movement was still so insurmountably much effort. “I know, Erik, but…it’s not right. Isolation isn’t something I’ve ever prepared for, and with just his one mind…I know him better than anyone, now. I know him better than I know you. That’s already too much.”

“Would you rather be alone?”

No. Charles ignored the mad, unproductive loop of self-loathing; he had convinced Erik of so much more than this before. He made himself look, properly, straining to reach through the helmet and feeling nothing and nothing and nothing, and the way Erik’s eyes were like slate with no thought behind them. Charles had never thought himself above pleading. “The boundaries between us are breaking down altogether.” If he could just make Erik see the urgency of this. “I’m going to collapse his mind and he’s going to go back to his wife an unstable wreck—”

“He shouldn’t be going back at all.”

Charles bit down the fury of that. “I could collapse my own mind.”

Erik’s bottom lip moved minutely, the invisible shift of his jaw—other than that, nothing.

Nothing. Charles tried to watch the second hand of the clock, only the second hand, a familiar friend, faithfully always the same. “You’d kill him? After all he’s done for us?”

Erik rolled his shoulders back. “I’d offer him a choice. He could be useful to us. He seems very competent, and we don’t have a doctor. I’d offer him a place with us. If he refused, I would do the only other logical thing and prevent him from betraying us.”

“He doesn’t know anything useful.”

“Everything is useful.”

Charles watched his own hand instead of the second hand. His was limp against the bedcover. He didn’t watch his legs, more limp still.

Erik sat forward, elbows on his knees. “Why are we discussing this? I promised you that he would be returned, and he’ll be returned.”

Charles watched his hand, not moving, by his leg, not moving.

“So. Would you rather be alone?”

He swallowed laboriously; he watched his hand; he watched the clock. No. No, he wouldn’t. But he should. Alone, he might go mad, but with Calker here he’d probably drive them both mad. He was better than this. He was better than to drag down this man who’d done everything in his power to heal him. He swallowed again. “Yes.”

Erik barked a laugh. “That was convincing.”

“I would rather be alone.”

“And who will deal with your injury?”

Charles didn’t really have an answer for that, but it was a secondary concern.

“I’m not a doctor, Charles. I can’t take care of you.”

“I have some medical knowledge.”

“You can’t treat yourself.”

“Most of the treatment’s done.”

Erik’s fists worked slowly open and closed on his knees. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“I don’t want to heal if I lose my mind.”

“You’re not _going_ to—” Erik gritted his teeth. “Your mind is powerful, Charles. You can’t be broken by this.”

And he really believed it—for maybe the first time since Erik had put on the helmet, Charles was certain of his mind in that.

Erik had brought him here against his will and sent the boys away and isolated him on the South American coast and was planning he didn’t even want to think about what, but…he still believed in Charles’s mind. How impossible that seemed.

It didn’t make it true, but it did almost make Charles smile, almost, for the first time in…did it matter? “Your belief won’t keep me whole, my friend.”

Erik drew a measured breath in, let it silently out. “I’m not sending away your doctor.”

“Erik—”

“Let me speak, Charles. I’m not sending away your doctor. If it’s what you want, I’ll take him back to Argentina and he can come here when he needs to be here.”

Charles took a moment to consider that. “You could send him home and he could come here when he needs to—”

“Don’t push me, Charles.”

And again almost, almost enough to smile, warring with the hate in his belly, in his unmoving feet. “Isn’t that what I do best?”

For a long time, or long enough, Erik watched; watched him breathe, maybe, or the rise and fall of his throat, which is really the same thing, or the flicker of his eyelashes, or nothing at all, something invisible in the air between them. The clock made a sound, a small sound, each time the second hand turned,

 _thk_

 _thk_

 _thk_

 _thk_

and Charles tried not to count the seconds in his head, _thk_ , _thk_ , _thk thk_ faster and faster over vague dreams of a picnic in New Jersey with two little girls and a jug of iced tea.

“I will get you through this.”

Erik’s voice was quiet, and very sure.

When he left, he took Calker with him, and Charles tried not to scream into the silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All singing all dancing thanks to ettu, Kyrene, maimo and AnonymousBlu for comments on last chapter! <3
> 
> This one ended up a bit longer than I expected, but next one should still be up some time Wednesday :)
> 
> Oh, and I meant to note: some of the slang I've used in the 50s timeline (AWOL, civvies, etc) is probably US-specific (or even Australian?). I have no doubt that there are probably equivalent phrases used in the Israeli army, but for the purposes of this story, I'm writing in English and using language that I and you will understand ;) As always, there is only very, *very* minimal research involved in this story and everything should be regarded as fiction <3


	24. Chapter 24

On the twelfth of October, 1929, the Jewish community in the city of Nuremberg welcomed a new child into the world; a blue-eyed baby boy, first child of Jakob and Edie Lensherr.

On the twelfth of February, 1954, Erik Lensherr walked back into Nuremberg with a rucksack, sleeping bag tied to the top.

He didn’t bother changing his name. There was no one left here to know it.

***

On the twenty-fourth day since their arrival in Peru, Dr. Calker tells Charles that it is time to remove part of the brace. Charles does not think about it much. Calker comes every day, once every day, and Charles tries to shut himself down because it’s easier like that, easier not to grab onto the relief like life itself and refuse to let go until Calker’s mind is ripped apart when Erik takes him away.

Erik wants to help—Erik always wants to help. Calker is concerned but unwilling to object, and Charles is concerned but unwilling to consider letting Erik rip his back to pieces.

Erik is, as ever, nothing if not confident. “Don’t be stupid, Charles.”

“Doctor Calker knows what he’s doing.”

“You of all people should support the potential to harness our powers to—”

“To do what?”

Erik frowns as though perhaps Charles really has lost his mind. Calker hovers nervously by the wall.

Erik runs a hand along the back of the chair. It’s a self-calming gesture; Charles can’t hear it through the helmet, but he has learned this, is learning, slowly, the things that he can still see. Erik's voice is almost patience. “To make this process as safe as possible.”

Charles shakes his head—it can’t shake far, but the brace is less restrictive now than it was four weeks ago. There’s less of it. “To increase your control. To feed your need for control, my friend.”

“Charles—”

“That’s what it is, my friend, whether you realise it or not. You want to ‘help’ because you want that control. Over me. Over the human body. Over the metal in my back. It’s your instinct to control any metal within reach. You’re addicted to control.”

Hand back along the top of the chair to clench at his side. “You’re rambling.”

“Because I’m mad?”

“No.” A little too loud, just a little. “No. You’re not—you know you’re not mad. Stop this.”

“Then you know I’m not rambling.”

“Charles—”

“If you wanted to do everything in your power to make my recovery as safe as possible, Erik, you would have sent me back to Westchester with the boys. I would be recovering in my own home, with constant medical attention and minimal stress. Instead, I am recovering on the—” catching himself, just, though how Calker hasn’t heard their location in Charles's thoughts he has no idea—“on a remote coast in isolation, under incrredible stress, with no support, no company, and every chance of losing my mind as well as my legs.”

He should regret saying it. It's cruel and pointless and he would never have said it were it not for the helmet. Charles knows that if Erik took the helmet off now, he’d be disgusted with himself, for saying it, for being the cause of the hurt and the hate that he can almost, almost see roiling behind all of the blankness in Erik's face.

The helmet isn't gone, and Charles is tired, and angry, and if his body isn’t his own anymore, can he be expected to be himself? To be patient? To be kind? To care either way?

He does, though—does care, however little he wants to—and he hates himself more than he hates Erik.

***

For most men, it takes time, or money, or both, to make a perfect, shiny tin bowl to sell at market. You can beat one into shape, or cast one, laboriously by hand or in mass production with a massive factory.

The first batch, Erik made one by one in his little flat, half of the top floor of the cosy house of a peering elderly lady who did, after all, remember the name “Lensherr” in this town, though she did appear to be the only one. He shaped each carefully, perfect enough to sell, simple enough not to raise questions.

He sold them out of his rucksack at the chaotic, self-governing market in the square on his second Saturday in town. There was not a lot of money in Germany. He lowered the price halfway through the day, and sold most of his creations. It was still a profit. Used tin cans and metal trash cost nothing to melt down, for Erik.

After the second batch, the second Saturday market, he filled one of the bowls with molten stuff and made himself a mould. It was easy, then; melt down cans, press the soft metal over the mould, set it. Three or four bowls a minute was no problem. He ran out of trash, and floated some silverware out of a window on the other side of the little town in the middle of the night. No one here deserved silver when his parents had been driven out like dogs.

He sold tin bowls and silver bowls at market, cheaper and cheaper until they were gone. It didn’t matter much.

When, on the fourth Saturday, two women selling garden herbs from a little table began passing around questions—how did he afford to bring in silver and sell it so cheaply?—Erik went home, and packed his rucksack full of his possessions. He scrolled a flower, roughly, then another, better one, and then a satisfied string of them and a few leaves, around the edge of the last silver bowl, and left it in the middle of the old lady’s kitchen table. He left town heading south, toward warmer weather, and kept walking.

***

It’s the small, irrational fears that get to Charles, when night has come and Erik is gone. He can roll now, sort of, now that the brace is gone, and what if he rolls off the bed and his legs don’t follow and he breaks his back again, perhaps higher up? It’s not a conscious fear in as many words, but it’s the flinch every time his shoulders shift one way or the other, and then the new panic—what if that flinch aggravates the injury? What if he can still lose more?—and it’s enough, the small things, to keep sleep at a distance.

***

Erik didn’t sleep the first night walking out of Nuremberg, or the second. He walked for three days until he was almost ready to collapse, and then did collapse, in a sheltered spot off the road. Far enough, he told himself as he drifted toward sleep. This was far enough. No one from the square in Nuremberg could chase him here.

When he woke, he walked some more, and then hitched a ride in a car for two hours over a particularly insurmountable piece of mountain, and then walked another day and, eventually, within a day’s walk of the border with Austria, he stopped.

Erik paid a few coins for a week’s rent of the flat above a little store in Rettenberg, a tiny, faceless town with a few people and a brewery. It was tempting to settle back, to float tins from the trash up to the window in the dark and make easy money, but safer, perhaps, to stay away from bowls. Foolish to underestimate what rumours might spread, how far. There were other metals, and he could make other things. When night fell, Erik walked around town, then on down the road. Not quite two miles away, like the rotting corpse of some vicious creature brought down but never properly carried off, he found the wreckage left of a Dachau subcamp, not a particularly large one. Armaments manufacture. Not a death camp, but torment and despair and death nonetheless. Bars and chains, stray bullets and whole metal walls, a slab of iron that didn’t fit, perhaps, on the trucks when the Allies took away what was left that could be used. Erik was never in the camps. His father and uncle had been; he’d found their names in the records. Auschwitz, dead. In Israel, in the army, he’d lied by omission; his family had died in Auschwitz, and he’d lived. That he hadn’t been there, no one needed to know—that he’d been subject to a different torture, not for his race but for his—what to call it? Gift, it had always been to the doktor. It didn’t matter much.

This had been a small sub-camp, and it was the middle of the night, and Erik didn’t have trouble getting in—didn’t have trouble seeing the empty spaces where people had starved and fallen down in exhaustion and begged for life and begged for death and none of it had made a shred of difference.

Plenty of iron, plenty of steel.

Erik walked back to town with the squarish slab of iron floating by his side, close to the ground where it could be quickly dropped. He floated it from Blaichach the two miles walk back to Rettenberg, and decided that he would be a maker of tools, like those that had fallen from the hands of dying men; and of chain—strong, heavy chains, like those that had shut the gates.

***

The first time they try to move him into the chair, it feels like ripping the hole back open and all the solid things in his back splitting.

Charles counts to five-thousand in his mind; when he reaches it, the clock doesn’t stop, and he passes out in his well-padded borrowed-from-New-Jersey wheelchair.

***

In Rettenberg, Erik is smarter. There is no need to sell things himself. No need for anyone to ever see him, really. The woman in the store downstairs sells his products, takes a small cut for herself, another cut in rent, leaves him enough to buy food, which is really all that he needs. He makes chains for people to make fences, and chains for people to lock gates, and chains for people to shut doors. He makes a chain for a man to secure the dog that he uses to hunt. He makes a tiny, fine chain from silver for the woman in the store. He makes hammers, and tongs, and fire pokers. Germany is very poor, and people don’t need chain like they need bowls, but Erik doesn’t need much money.

The woman asks how he makes chain in the little flat, and he tells her he casts it over the same fire he cooks on. He shows her a mould, and another for smaller links; they are things he did use, at the start, but he’s quicker now at stretching and twisting the metal freeform, quicker that way for him than moulding links and joining them. She’s puzzled—surely the fire isn’t hot enough, and surely it’s too slow making only a few links at a time, waiting for them to set—but the truth is beyond her horizon of understanding, and so she accepts the lie.

Erik stays for seven months, and feels utterly empty. Strange, foolish, perhaps, to feel lost in a town of two-thousand people where nothing changes, but he packs his rucksack again and walks out of town in the middle of the night.

***

It shouldn’t be so painful, Calker says.

Not painful enough for Charles to lose consciousness.

Erik holds Charles’s head in two hands and says nothing.

It’s most likely a psychosomatic issue, the doctor says. A thing of the mind.

Erik says: Charles _is_ a thing of the mind.

***

Poland, Erik decides.

It’s Poland that he needs to go to—it’s Poland that he’s looking for.

It was in Poland that his parents died, in Poland that his own life ended. Poland is not the enemy like Germany is the enemy, and how did he ever think that it would be right to go back to the place of his birth, when the place of his birth spat him out, threw his mother out like so much filth?

No, it is in Poland that he needs to be, and so he boards a train to Poland.

He switches to a smaller train line when he can, and he stops in the town of Zlotoryja, because a town is better than a city and he’s never been there. He stops because there are no traces of the war, no ruins, no chains. He stops, partly, because it’s a mining town, gold and copper, and he is at home in metal. He finds a flat, and he makes a deal with a little general store, and sometimes he spirits away gold in the night to make jewellery but mostly, for the sake of invisibility, he makes very simple tin bowls.

***

The second time in the wheelchair, Charles decides that his back now has two positions only, black and white—straight, and bent, and he’s sure there’s a large crunch when Calker and Erik lift him from the former into the latter.

He’s dead weight—he hasn’t moved in over a month, and if he knows intellectually that he cannot actually feel the flesh of his legs rotting, then his imagination more than suffices.

They lift him, and there’s the crunch, and he sits.

There are words involved, but he doesn’t listen much to words. Charles focuses on staying deep inside of himself, resisting the temptation to evacuate into the other mind in the room, the body that still walks, and it would be so easy, to take Calker’s mind, maybe kill them both; or to take control just long enough to kill them all.

He doesn’t listen to Erik talk, because everything about Erik hurts, and there is nothing left to say.

He sits in the chair, because he can’t move.

Erik wheels him out of the little white room and into the light, and Charles shuts his eyes.

***

Pruszków is a lot larger but a lot nearer to Warsaw, and that is what he needs, Erik has decided.

Warsaw is where his mother died, and that is where he should be: near to Warsaw, in her memory, in memory of everything that has been taken from him for no reason at all. Pruszków remembers; there were camps here, transition camps, for a time, and before that, before the war, a large Jewish community. No one remembers the things that Erik remembers, but here, at least, they remember something.

He walks into town and into the largest store, which is not very large, and smiles, and explains that he is a supplier of metal bowls and utensils. He reports that other stores have had very good sales with his wares, and he is slick and practised, and the store agrees to trial the things he makes for a month. After a month, they lodge a standing order; every month they buy from him boxes and boxes of small metal things, and it is very settled and normal.

He stays half a year, hates the man to whom he pays rent, hates the man who buys his boxes of meaningless things, hates the woman who sells him groceries, hates the people on the street outside his window.

***

“You can wheel yourself around, Charles.”

Doctor Calker’s voice is kind and patient, and Charles watches the clock at the top of the wall.

“In time, the chair can do many of the things for which you used your legs. You will be able to move freely again.”

Erik is standing in the doorway. Charles cannot see him, but he knows he is there.

“You have to try, though. Come on. Just try to push the wheels, just like I showed you.” Calker is kneeling in front of him, face very earnest. Kind. He cares, genuinely; Charles knows this, and wishes he didn't.

Calker doesn’t go away when Charles does nothing, so Charles puts his hands on the wheels, and pushes.

***

In Warsaw, Erik checks his appearance carefully in the mirror in his tiny rented room, loud, stupid men drinking watered-down beer below. His appearance is as it always is—Erik is meticulous because his life has been meticulous for a long time, and because the army taught him to be meticulous, and not because he grew up in the meticulous mad universe of a meticulous madman because he is not the doktor’s creation.

Erik looks satisfactorily military, always does, and he leaves his tiny room in the morning and knocks on doors and follows vague leads for several days until he secures a meeting in his second week in Warsaw with someone in military supply.

Erik knows guns—Erik served in the Israeli army for more than three years and he knows the parts of a machine gun like he knows his name. He brings a well-made product and an impossibly low price, and becomes a supplier for the Polish military.

***

When Charles wheels himself from one side of the room to the other, Calker beams, and Charles can feel the relief despite how hard he’s trying to feel nothing from the doctor.

Erik smiles, and that could mean anything, or nothing, or both.

His arms hurt too much, the muscles stall and slip; he can’t wheel himself back the way he came, even when Erik turns the chair around. Calker smiles anyway, and says things, like he’s always saying things—“that’ll come with time, you’ll see. Your arms will get stronger the more you work on it, but you’ve got the basic motion. See? You’re doing well, really well—”

–and Charles wonders whether it mightn’t be kinder, really, to take Calker’s mind and kill them all now—except that Erik has the helmet, and he might not expect Charles to take the doctor’s body but he’s too careful and his reflexes are too quick. He’d kill Calker, and then Calker would be dead, and Charles would still be alive, and Erik would still be alive, and then it would all be rather beside the point.

***

For eight months, Erik makes guns.

It is easier, as it turns out, to be invisible in a big city. He eats, he sleeps, he makes the pieces that slot together to kill a man.

He pays his rent in an envelope, and doesn't look at the woman in the store when he buys food. No one knows him here, and he knows no one. Erik is safe; life is stable; he has everything he needs.

Sometimes, Erik looks out of his window, and watches the men and the women and the little children walking up and down the footpath, and wonders whether they hate like he does; whether they can all see how hopeless it is and just keep walking anyway, or whether, perhaps, he is the only one who sees it. Sometimes it matters; mostly it doesn't.

***

On the thirtieth day in Peru, Erik comes into the room alone.

He sits on the chair, and Charles watches the clock.

“The sooner you learn to use the wheelchair, the sooner the doctor can leave.”

 _Thk_ , _thk_ , _thk_.

“No doubt his wife is worried.”

 _Thk_ , _thk_ , _thk_.

“Once you can use the wheelchair, I’ll have Azazel take him back to New Jersey.”

Words and words and words, and no thoughts at all.

“Do you not care about that any longer? Shall I keep him with us, then?”

Charles presses his elbows into the mattress the way that Calker has shown him, and drags the dead weight of his legs up the bed, and tips himself off the side, toward the chair, onto the floor.

Erik doesn’t see it coming in time to catch Charles properly but he lunges off the chair and catches his head before it hits the floor, and Charles hates him for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this is a few days late! Underestimated both the number of bits and pieces of research and the sheer inertia of writing both Erik and Charles depressed in the same chapter x_X I think that both will start heading more toward the young men we know next chapter, though.
> 
> Thanks and love and flailing to Kyrene, Ettu and Blu for comments last chapter. About to reply to them now <3 Comments always very much appreciated :)


	25. Chapter 25

The bedroom is not large.

It is not a large square to wheel around.

Each wall is excessively short—with the bed taken into account, each straight line is barely a few rounds of the wheels. Then another corner, and Charles hates corners. Corners are difficult, still, and physical skill has never been his forte. There is a degree of arm strength that he simply doesn’t have.

He can wheel around the whole room now, more than once; if Erik helps with the corners, then he can square the room, square around the bed, and around again and a third time before his arms start to cramp. He does it mechanically, and puts in genuine effort, and tries not to think; not an entirely foreign effort, thankfully. When Charles was younger, much younger, a strange child with a strange life, there were times when the world was overwhelming: the press of a thousand thoughts, a million half-formed ideas. Now, the press of silence is overwhelming, the weight of his own thoughts trapped inside his head without distraction, and he sinks back into every way he’s ever known how not to think, how to be small and quiet and nowhere and no one. He focuses on his arms, and pushes through the cramps.

Charles knows John Calker like a brother, or a lover, or a child. Perhaps like a child most of all, because the way in which he understands John's fears is the way one sees the fears of a child—the simplest things, without the intervening frame of wrongs and rights and hates and wants and needs and reality. There is nothing in between he and the doctor—soon, the doctor will go, and Charles will never see him again. There is nothing in the man to be careful of, nothing to consider. Just knowing—simple, very simple knowing.

It is not like one knows a child, because no one ever knew a child like Charles knows this man. It is not like the doctor might be an extension of Charles's self, because no one ever knew himself like Charles knows the doctor. It is as though Calker were perhaps a character in Charles’s mind, a small creation to love and know and learn and shape, and that is dangerous and impossible and makes it so very important that Charles get this right. Charles needs Calker to survive this; needs Erik to let him go home to his wife who Charles knows so well, the shape of her skin and the colour of her eyes and the sound of her voice and all of the small things two people know after a life together; to his granddaughters, so grown up now and still so small in his eyes. It is essential that Calker go home safe, and for that to happen, Charles has to learn to use the wheelchair.

So he wheels himself along the length of the wall, and tries to do the corner, and lets Erik help when he cannot. He wheels himself the tiny little length to the edge of the bed, leans against it for a moment, and keeps going.

Calker will live. Calker will go home, and be happy. Charles might never walk again, but Calker will, will go back and do everything he’s always expected to do in the remainder of his life. That is what matters—that is all that can matter, because that he can do. In this he can be sure.

Charles reaches the end of the bed, and pulls himself awkwardly around the corner without help.

***

The thing about Warsaw was—his mother had died there. He’d lost his life here.

It was why he’d come, and it was what he wanted.

Erik lasted six weeks before he went to the street, looked up at the window. It was the first place he’d ever seen the doktor, staring at him out the window as his world had fallen apart.

Erik walked away, walked through what little remained of the ghetto, then the makeshift museum that had been put together. 1942 and photographs of trains. 254,000 to Treblinka that summer; familiar numbers. The razing of the ghetto in '43; his parents had gotten out with him before then, been hiding in the basement of a Polish family whose name he didn't remember. The Warsaw Uprising of ’44, and by then it had been too late for him. His mother had been dead, he'd been—elsewhere. His father and uncle had been in Auschwitz, and probably dead already. Photographs of the camps, photographs of the trains, photographs of the gates. Erik remembered fighting those gates, as the doktor watched from his study; struggling to follow his family through to get on a train bound for extermination.

He went home to his flat—six weeks and he had a flat now, an infinite improvement on the room above the drunks. He walked back along the street again, where the gates had been, but he didn’t look up at the window as he passed.

He lasted another two and half weeks before he went back. He stood, this time—didn’t walk away, but watched the window, and didn’t see anything. After three and a half hours, a policeman asked with a strong suggestion whether anything was the matter, and Erik took the hint and moved along.

When he’d been in Warsaw three months, Erik lodged a request for information on the owners of the building. He got the information, with a few words here and there; the owners now, the owners ten years ago. None of the names were familiar, not now or then or before then. Maybe the doktor had never owned the building; maybe he’d rented the rooms. Maybe the names were fakes.

Late, very late on the 2nd of July, Erik wrote a letter to the names that were on the building’s deeds in the year his mother had fallen down. He’d already chased their address; it had been in an envelope under his mattress for weeks, being hard to ignore. He sent the letter the next morning. It came back ‘no such name’ five weeks later. The address existed, but no one of that name had ever lived there. Chances were they wouldn’t keep rental records anyway. That was probably it. They probably weren’t fake names. There was no reason for fake names. The doktor had been a Nazi. He’d had no reason to hide.

Erik put the returned letter back under his mattress, and sat down on the floor where he always sat, and returned to work, turning melted down metal stolen from here and there into the parts of a gun. He had an order due.

***

It is eleven, probably in the morning. No one is here but Charles, and so Charles does not know. There are four walls, a cabinet, a bed. Two chairs, one of them with wheels. A clock, and no thoughts.

It is the thirty-seventh day that he has spent here, unless he’s slept through a day, and he hasn’t done that in weeks.

Charles presses his elbows into the mattress as Calker has taught him, and drags the dead weight of his legs up the bed. The muscles in his stomach are not firming as quickly as the muscles in his arms, but his core strength is nonetheless improved. He can hold himself up, between the two. He can move himself sideways, a stiff, heavy shuffle to the edge of the bed. The chair is there, where it should be, and the bed is the right height now, has been lowered a little.

He could do this entirely wrong, hit the floor hard, manage to break something. Perhaps he could concuss himself. Or he could get it right, and wheel himself out of this room, and meet Erik’s conditions. Neither option sounds more terrible than lying here right now does, awake and still and silent.

Charles presses his hands, calloused now, no longer soft, into the mattress, and launches himself from the bed.

***

On the 21st of August, Erik took the letter out from under his mattress. No one of that name had lived at that address, but someone had, and perhaps that someone had been the owner of the building. A fake name wasn’t such a stretch.

The address was in Germany, but not so far away; he could get there. He didn’t for one day, and another, and then he got on a train and went to Germany.

The local council was not particularly concerned with information security. The name that had been on the deed for the house in 1944 did not exist anywhere else in their records, and it wasn’t a name with which Erik was familiar as such, but it was one that he had heard—he wasn’t even sure where, but he was sure, sure that he’d heard it somewhere, as a child. This house had belonged to someone connected to the doktor. The owner of this house had been the owner of the building in Warsaw. It hadn’t been rented—these _were_ the records of the man.

Erik got back on the train, back to Warsaw.

Records existed. It wasn’t that he’d ever doubted his memories—it was not so long ago, and it had been years of his life. It had happened, and no one had ever known. But to think that the man might still exist, in the same world as Erik, like any man on the street—it had only been six and a half years. The doktor was still alive unless he’d been killed. He’d survived the end of the war, and that made it unlikely that he was dead now.

It was too impossible to consider.

That Erik was alive here, in Warsaw, making guns and buying food and paying rent, and that that man still existed, that somewhere, the doktor worked in an underground lab on who knew what, unapprehended…

It was unbelievable in the most literal sense.

That there might be records, however, Erik was starting to get his head around. There _were_ records—he’d seen them. The doktor was not a phantom, a monster, a dark, unknowable thing leaving no trace. The doktor was a man, vulnerable like all men, leaving paper traces behind him.

Erik stood outside the window of the building, and tried not to feel as though if he broke in, the doktor would still be sitting there, just out of sight.

***

Charles rubs uncomfortably at his hip. Nothing.

He presses his palms to the arms of the chair, pushes down hard, and manages to shift himself sideways.

About right, he thinks.

Is his hip going to bruise? He has no way to know, really. He didn’t quite get it—80% of the way, tilted oddly not quite in the seat with his hip pressed unnervingly into one arm of the chair and his upper arm into the other. His arm hurts, so his hip will probably bruise. The concern is largely academic.

Charles presses his arms into the arms of the chair one more time and resettles himself properly. Sitting in the wheelchair. His wheelchair. The wheelchair. It might have tipped over when he hit it if it weren’t so bottom-heavy. Perhaps they’re all made like that.

His arms are sore now—the one bruising, and both tired just from getting out of bed and settling himself in the chair. Erik would scoff, if he weren’t so occupied with being blank. Then, maybe Charles would laugh, if he weren’t too.

Erik’s not here.

Charles takes a deep breath, and shifts his hands to the wheels, and pushes.

He’s never opened a door from the chair, but he gets to the door, and stops, and lifts an arm, and turns the handle. Opening the door is more complicated; it opens inward, and the chair is here. But he pulls the door ajar, then puts his hands back to the wheels, backs up—he can go backward, now, he does learn quickly, weak arms or no—there’s the impulse, briefly, the breath of a thought, to kick the door open with his foot, but it’s gone almost too quickly to hurt. He leans forward slowly, carefully, one arm bracing him on the arm of the chair, and reaches forward with the other—and the door is swinging open.

It’s morning. Eleven in the morning. Charles can already see the sunlight in the hall.

Sunlight.

He pushes out of the room; a left turn, and he can do that—and there it is, spreading out forever into silence. The sun is blindingly bright on the ocean and the realisation that he can still see—that his eyes are still open, and not just the little room like a space that never really existed—Charles takes a slow breath, lets it out. Erik isn’t here, so he flexes his arms against the stiffness.

Charles wheels himself all the way to the great glass wall. The sky is like taking a breath in. If he backed up, maybe, if he wheeled backward to the wall, put it all into his arms and went forward as fast as he could, then perhaps, just maybe, the weight of the chair might break through the glass, and he could fly, out over the edge, over the cliff, out into the ocean—

The ocean is silent, thoughtless, and Charles breathes out.

Silent.

Silent.

The room is not the edges of the world, and the sea is still here, and the sky, and Charles needs the air, the free air to breathe, and the heat, or the cool, or whatever is out there, and the wetness in the air before rain and the movement of the wind and what Charles really needs is thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts.

There is a door—it is a house, and there is a door—there is a door at each end, one at this end, down two stairs, and one right up the far end of the open space, down past the dining area, up two stairs.

Charles has never done stairs. He could, though—he’s seen it, in the doctor’s mind, that a wheelchair can do stairs. Up would be hard—he doesn’t have the arm strength for up, he doesn’t think. But down…a wheelchair can go down stairs, he’s seen it, seen it being done in Calker’s thoughts. Two steps, only two steps down, and then a door, and he can open doors, and then the air, the air and he could go, and go, and keep going, and his arms would hold out, his arms would have to hold out because from here there is only sand but somewhere, somewhere there are people, and if every muscle in his body falls away his arms can hold out until people, his arms can hold out until air and thoughts and life, and life, somewhere beyond all of the sand. He can do this. He’s strong. He’s always been strong.

Charles wheels the chair over to the top of the stairs—just a little drop to the entryway. Two low stairs. He stretches his arms again.

Slowly, then. Front wheels down to the first step, then the next step as the back wheels go to the first, and then he’ll be on the flat again. He can do this. He can do this.

Charles takes a breath, and puts his hands on the wheels, and pushes.

Front wheels to the first—and he’s tipping, tipping forward out of his seat and no, no he can do this he can do this gripping the arm of the chair holding himself in and he can—but the chair is tipping, tipping, and—

***

On October 12, Erik posted a formal letter to his contact in military supply. I regret to inform you that I will no longer be in a position to work with the department.

He was twenty-six; he didn't know what time he'd been born, but midnight was good enough.

At 12:15, he boarded a train back to Germany, rucksack on his back.

There was no need, really, to quit his job. There was no need to end the lease on his flat. There was no need to be carrying his things, but—there was need, for Erik.

He needed to be doing this—for this to be what he was doing.

***

Charles breathes.

It hurts.

Breathe in, and out. In and out.

_Breathe, and breathe, and breathe, and breathe._

Everything hurts. Or—his legs don’t hurt. His hips don’t hurt. Maybe his hip is bruised, but it doesn’t hurt. His arms hurt, and his ribs hurt, and his head hurts.

The wheelchair is on top of his legs. It must be heavy—it’s huge, and metal—but he can’t feel it.

Charles breathes.

He can see the door. There is the door, and no more stairs. He’s at the bottom of the stairs. What does it matter how?

Charles gives himself a minute to think. His arms hurt, but not nearly enough to be broken. His head hurts more than anything, and he could have a concussion. That’s not a major problem, though. He thinks, and moves his arm, and pushes over onto his back. Success. Now he can press both palms to the ground, and push down, and—sitting. Sitting, by himself. Sore arms, and stomach muscles sore, and head throbbing, but.

The wheelchair is still on his legs. He leans forward against it a moment—rests his core.

He needs to right the wheelchair. It’s heavy, but he can’t feel it on his legs, and it doesn’t matter what damage it has done to them. They’re useless to him now. So strange, to throw away a part of himself so simply. But no, not a part of himself. Just a part of his body. Just a part of his body. Not a part of his mind.

When he can breathe again without gasping, Charles sits up straight, and grips the wheelchair with both hands, and pulls.

He almost tips backward, has to rely on his grip on the chair to hold him up; shifts his weight and tries again with no luck; but third time lucky, it moves—falls back—an odd, unfelt sound of this heavy thing falling again on his knees, crushing things that are meaningless now—and then again, and he's got it, pull and push—and the chair tips past its point of balance, and Charles lets go, and it falls into place, on four wheels once more.

Now to get himself up.

Pressing his palms into the floor, Charles drags his body around; not so different to dragging his body up the bed to sit. And he's at the foot of the chair. Easy. There is a different way of moving, now—a different map of the body, a different set of rules for working the world. Calker has been teaching him, and Charles knows Calker, better than he knows anything. The arms lead, must always lead, really, and he lifts both arms and grasps the arm of the chair. He can pull himself up. He can do this.

The first time, his waist hits the footrest on the way falling back down—his waist is more painful to hit than his hip. His waist still exists. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as his head. It doesn’t matter.

The second time, he gets at least two thirds of the way high enough, he’s sure. Almost there. He can do this.

The third time, one hand slips from the arm of the chair and he falls backward, knocks his shoulder. He pulls himself back up.

The fourth time, he doesn’t make it half-way high enough.

Harder. He can do this.

The fifth time, he makes it no higher.

Charles sits at the foot of the chair, and breathes.

He has to think. Could just the house be insulated to thoughts, like the room on Shaw’s sub? No, no, he can hear Calker’s thoughts as he approaches, when he comes. Maybe he arrives in the basement, though? But no, he arrives outside, out in the desert. Charles knows the outside of the house in the doctor’s eyes, the look of the sand. Just getting outside the house won't stop the silence, then. Still, getting outside has to be worth something. Once he's outside, he can find a way to go further. Getting outside is the first step. He should use his energy to do that. Forget the chair.

But what can he do without the chair?

Anything. He can do this. He doesn’t need the chair. He’s strong. He can do this.

Palms back to the floor. Charles drags himself the length of his arms, then again, then again. Easy to drag his body along the ground, when his body feels nothing. The friction is probably hot on his skin, but his skin can’t feel it so what does it matter? What would it matter if he did feel it?

Another length of his arms, and another. He can do this. He can get to the door, and out of it. He doesn’t need the chair. He’s better than this. He can do all of this. He can get past this. He knows he can get past this, and he can get out of this door and then something will happen, something will happen, and something will change, and everything will be—

Charles’s fingers touch the bottom of the door, and he pulls himself to join them. Sitting at the base of the door. Right.

Charles raises an arm, and reaches for the door handle. It’s high. Not quite within reach.

Right, well. Arms have to lead. How to jump with arms? Press down.

Charles presses one palm to the ground, stretches one up, and pushes—a little rise, a very little rise, not enough. Not enough even to touch with fingertips.

Both arms, perhaps. Right. Charles presses both palms to the floor, smooth polished boards, pushes hard, pushes himself up off the ground, throws a hand up in the air—

—the back of his hand hits the door as he hits the ground again.

No matter. It doesn’t matter. He can do this. He can push himself up on his knees. Doesn’t matter that his legs don’t work, they’re still there, they can still get him higher, and he can do this—

Both palms flat on the ground, roll over. Lie on the ground on his front. Push up. He can lever himself up off the ground, knees a pivot point, use the door to push himself up to his knees upright. Arms tired, tired but he can do this—push up—up this far, now higher, have to get higher. Charles jumps one hand from the floor to the flat of the door and he's tipping, tipping but steady, steady, he can do this, push one hand into the wall one into the floor, his weight between them, pushing, and he has to lift the other hand, just has to jump the other hand up to the door—jump the other hand and falling but he can catch slam elbow arm hand into door and he’s up he’s up he’s up not steady but he's up clinging to the flat the glossy paint sweating palms hold hold hold hold—

—dead knees collapse under dead thighs and Charles tips sideways, falling, falling, hands grasping for the doorknob as the side of his head hits the ground.

***

Erik is going to find the doktor

—find the man who had his mother shot, find the man who took away his life, find the man who owned the coin in Erik's pocket before he did—

and he’s going to kill him.

It’s the first time in three years he’s had a purpose, and it feels amazing.

***

Charles opens his eyes slowly.

Everything hurts.

For a moment he expects the brace to be on his back, holding him still; then for another moment he expects the wheelchair to be on his legs. It’s not. He can see his legs. He can see one arm, lying on top of his body. He can see the other arm, stretched out in front of him.

Everything hurts.

Palm to the ground, and press up—pain pain pain pain pain through his shoulder and he stills.

Is his arm broken? Maybe. He picks up his head, and his vision tips, and he puts it down again. Damp, beneath his cheek. He’s bleeding. Maybe not still? He’s not sure. He's not sure how long he's been here. It's still sunlight outside the windows.

Bleeding from the head, and maybe a broken arm, and paralysed legs. Purely academic.

And then Charles looks up, and sees the door. The doorhandle is so high, so far away, and he can’t lift up his head. He can’t press his hand into the ground. He can’t sit up.

Everything hurts.

Nothing moves.

Nothing works at all.

The door is so, so close.

Charles watches the doorknob, and wills it to move, and breathes, and watches the doorknob, and then screams, and screams, and screams, and when his throat hurts and his chest hurt and his ribs hurt they still don’t hurt as much as his head, which still doesn’t hurt as much as his arm, which still doesn’t hurt as much as the doorhandle right there and nothing and nothing and nothing and silence, and so he keeps on screaming.

***

On the thirty-eighth day since he brought Charles to Peru to recover, Erik opens the door of the clifftop house at eight-am and finds Charles, sprawled on the ground in the wrong shape entirely, blood dried on the ground around his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy December everyone! I'm heading to Sydney for a few days, so next chapter will be up on Tuesday.
> 
> Thank you so much to Kyrene, kongjingying, ettu, lexie, celina, Blu and new readers Taricha and NW for comments since last chapter - you guys make my day <3


	26. Chapter 26

Charles wakes up in bed, dreams half his own, and half the doctor’s.

He is facing the chair, the one without wheels, and in the chair is Erik.

For several moments, Erik doesn’t say anything. He’s wearing the helmet. It shouldn’t be surprising anymore.

“Charles,” he says, finally. Nothing else.

Charles looks at him. Erik’s face is tired. There are bags under his eyes, bigger than usual, and the lines everywhere are tighter. Tired, and worried. Not blank, not really.

But there’s nothing, nothing where it matters.

“Can you hear me?”

The deepening frown, the visible crease of the brow. He thinks that Charles could have damaged his hearing? Or perhaps he’s just impatient. Erik is impatient, as a rule, despite his persistence.

Charles swallows. His throat is very dry. “I can.”

Erik shuts his eyes, and breathes out.

Behind him, Charles hears everything before the words are out. “What were you doing?” _How could this happen? I thought it was going well? Is he going to kill me now Xavier is awake? Should I speak? I shouldn’t have spoken. I should ask how long he was—but if it was too long—I can’t die. Not after getting this far. It was going so well. I thought—_

“Don’t hurt the doctor,” Charles croaks.

Erik looks between them, looks as though he might say something, and then says something else. “Answer the question. What happened?”

Charles looks at him; looks at him some more. He’s never been embarrassed in front of Erik. It just doesn’t—it’s not that he doesn’t get embarrassed, because he does. He’s been embarrassed in front of Raven. In front of strangers. He’s never been embarrassed in front of Erik, and he isn't now. What could matter? “I was trying to open the door.”

Erik’s eyes do widen; he is surprised; perhaps he thinks that Charles has lost his mind—but that’s alright.

Charles swallows again; it doesn’t help much. “I tried to go down the stairs and tipped the chair. Then I tried to open the door, and hit my head." Hard to talk, dry and sore, but Calker's thoughts are worse. Charles tries for short answers. "It was shortly after 11am...I think I was unconscious...for a few hours. The sun was—not very low, but visible, when I woke up. Then...” So hard to think—not to remember, but to process. "I may have gone to sleep. I was thirsty."

Calker is horrified; not speaking, but horrified. Erik is just staring. “How did you get out of bed?”

Charles doesn’t answer, but he gives John Calker a mental nudge that he should. The doctor coughs. “He transferred himself into the chair. He’s been making progress, Magneto.”

Erik doesn’t look away from Charles’s face. “Is that true?”

Charles licks his lips; feels as though he might swallow his tongue. “Mm.”

“Why did you try to go down the stairs?”

What to say? His mouth is too dry for anything that means anything. “Outside,” he settles on.

“You want to go outside?”

Charles sinks back a little, back, back into the shade, and the silence.

***

Charles wakes up with a breeze on his face.

For a moment, he tries to throw himself forward—and then there are warm, heavy hands spread across his shoulders. Erik’s hands.

Probably. It’s hard without Erik’s thoughts.

Charles opens his eyes.

The ocean—miles of the ocean, forever of the ocean, and yes, there’s the sound of it. The sound of waves that don’t really think of rage or of sleep or of anything else.

“Calker said you were conscious. He thought you were trying to get away from his thoughts. I sent him back to Peru.”

They are on the deck. He’d forgotten it was there. A wooden rail, and the ocean, and the sky, and the silence. There is the edge of a beach, down below, at the base of the cliffs, with dark sand. People might have come there, once.

“How do you feel?”

Charles swallows. “…water?”

Impossible to know what Erik thinks, with his face out of sight as well. A pause, and then—“Yes. The ocean.”

…he does think that Charles is mad. Well.

Charles breathes out. Patience. “I need water. To drink.” Croaked and sore. He should have screamed less.

Erik makes a small sound—maybe surprise, or maybe relief, or maybe annoyance, maybe at himself or maybe at Charles or maybe at no one—and the weight of his hands disappears.

Charles watches the waves come in and out. He tries to turn in his chair, but it hurts, and he stops. Erik will be back, hopefully with water.

“Here.” Less than a minute. Erik says it as he steps outside, and the glass of water is offered a moment later. "Calker gave you water while you were—sleeping. I thought—" Erik doesn't finish the sentence, and Charles doesn't know what Erik thinks, or thought. He takes the water gratefully in the hand that isn’t strapped and braced to his chest—he hadn’t noticed that, before. He drinks deeply, and then again. It hurts, in his throat and his ribs and his stomach, but it feels amazing on his lips and in his mouth and on his tongue and in his throat more than it hurts.

Erik watches him, standing beside now instead of behind. Better.

“Better?” he asks.

Charles drinks again, and then balances the glass on the wide arm of the chair. He licks his lips, and swallows. Is it better? “Yes,” he answers, late.

Better than with a dry throat.

Erik nods.

He watches Charles another moment, then turns to the ocean, two strong, large hands curled around the wooden board of the rail.

Charles licks his lips again. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have tried.”

“No,” Erik agrees. There is not so much as a bird on the beach. “You wanted to be outside?”

They are outside, Charles realises, belatedly. Or—he’d realised they were outside, but—they are outside because he said it was what he wanted.

Erik stares out into the ocean, or maybe the sky. Maybe the horizon between the two.

Charles watches Erik’s shoulders; the metal curve of the base of the helmet against his neck. “I wanted…I’m a telepath, Erik. I need _people_.”

Nothing—the lift of Erik’s shoulders, minute. Then—“You were trying to get to people.”

Charles swallows.

“There’s no one for miles. That’s why we came here. So that you couldn’t broadcast your dreams unintentionally.”

“I’m recovered. I’m off the morphine. That’s not a risk anymore.”

Erik doesn’t turn; doesn’t move. “Do you want to come back to base with everyone?”

Charles shuts his eyes a moment, opens them again, reminds himself that this is Erik, and they _know_ each other, helmet or no. “I want to go home to Westchester.”

Silence.

“I’d appreciate your help with something, Charles.”

It’s polite; non-threatening; humble, as Erik can sometimes be. Charles isn’t sure whether he’s been waiting for this or not, or what it means. It’s not usually hard for Charles to choose his words, but his head is still throbbing, bandaged. He makes the effort. “I will not have any part in the war you want, my friend.”

Erik nods, then again. “I have a number of men in custody. They have admitted to plans to harm mutants. I need to know the details of those plans in order to protect people.”

“And what will you do if you know?”

“Prevent them.”

Charles watches the man beside him, before him, leaning forward into the air, into the silence. “You know my conditions, Erik. I’m not interested in violence.”

“I have the men in my custody. I will have the information I need, with or without your help.”

“Erik—”

“Emma Frost can read their minds if you won't." Not quite hard—almost, incredibly, vulnerable. But Erik is never vulnerable—does not allow himself to be vulnerable. "I have less faith in her abilities and in her honesty than in yours, however, and if I am forced to rely on her, then I will have to use my own methods to confirm what she tells me.”

It is a threat; unmistakeably a threat.

Erik is still watching the horizon.

“I would like you to help me, Charles.”

A stranger, and not at all.

Erik turns around. “I need this information to protect people like us. I’ve gathered more, Charles. People like us, gifted people. Children, women, as well as men. You’d like them." It's not even really a sell—Erik believes it absolutely, and it's true, as far as it goes. "You can be a part of this, and _we_ can protect these people.”

Charles licks his lips; breathes in, and out. “At what cost?”

Erik doesn’t look away. “I want you by my side.”

Charles does look away, away and to the ocean, and then back again, because even all of the horror in Erik’s face, in his threats, and his demands, and everything falling apart, is better than the silence. “You won’t harm them. The men you have imprisoned.”

“I won’t have to, if you use your gift.”

Charles watches Erik’s eyes—Erik’s eyes that he knows, but not really, not really, because he’s never had to know anyone, really, in just their eyes.

It is honest, he thinks. If nothing else, it makes sense, and Erik is logical, mostly.

“Send John Calker home.”

“Fine.” No hesitation.

“I will find what you want to know, and you will send my doctor home unharmed.”

“Please.”

It is the right thing to do. Calker will be home, and happy. And Erik is not entirely wrong. There are people who need protection. There is no harm in reading the thoughts of men already here—or wherever the others are now, wherever Erik and Raven are staying. That he is negotiating with Erik—that this is giving up on real talk to make trades on lives and minds—that this is treating Erik not as a friend but as a liability to be minimised, almost as an enemy…maybe that is what is left, now. Maybe that has always been what's there, where he didn’t want to see it. But Charles can't believe that. He won't believe that. He doesn’t want to see it now, and so he doesn’t think about it, just says it.

“Alright.”

And Erik smiles, sudden and brilliant and so perfect—just smiles, like the time Charles knocked a pan of eggs off a kitchen bench at the house in Westchester making the boys breakfast and Erik caught it in mid-air from the doorway; like moonlight through a motel room window in Carolina and in Texas and in Washington and none of the secrets for a breathless moment; like nothing like a liability, and nothing like an enemy. He doesn’t say anything, standing with the sky behind him like Charles never will again, but he drops to his knees, down to Charles's level, and for a moment, for a moment Charles can almost imagine that everything is alright.

Charles blinks—swallows.

Erik smiles, really smiles, right to his eyes. His hand is enormous around Charles’s, much warmer than the arm of the chair. He clasps it not hard—careful—and he doesn’t look away.

Charles tries to smile, and manages, sort of, almost.

“Thank you, Charles.” So, so genuine. “You won’t regret this.”

“I hope not,” Charles offers, tiredly.

Erik's eyes are shut as he lowers his head, and presses his lips, not quite shut, to the back of Charles's hand.

The breeze is cool, and the ocean rolls on. Erik sits on the wooden boards of the deck and leans against the side of the chair, and holds Charles’s hand at an angle that must be awkward for Erik. After a while, Charles shifts his hand over the few inches to rest on the top of Erik’s head—on the top of the helmet. It would be nice, to card his fingers through Erik’s short hair, warm. It would be nice to hear Erik’s mind, quiet and deep and good.

Erik takes his hand gently, and shifts it away.

Charles is so very, very tired.

***

On the evening of the thirty-eighth day that Charles has spent on the Peruvian coast, Azazel appears in his lounge room.

Charles is in his chair, the wheelchair, his wheelchair, inside the door of the deck. The sun is setting over the ocean—it’s as beautiful as Erik told him it was, perhaps more so. The breeze is cool on his face here, but not cold as it is sitting properly outside.

Azazel’s head is full of everything that flocks and sinks in a human mind, and it feels like breathing in and out.

Erik has a hand on one of Azazel’s arms. “Are you alright?”

Charles puts his one good hand to one wheel and pushes—it turns the chair to face his visitors slowly, but effectively enough. Calker was here earlier—how to use one arm, for a while. A small modification to the chair. His other arm’s not broken, but his shoulder is badly hurt. Was dislocated, has been popped back into place. He’s not to use it for a while. It’s strapped to his body.

“I’m fine. The breeze is nice.”

Erik nods. “Ready?”

“I have nothing to make ready.”

Erik frowns, but says nothing. He motions for Azazel to follow; they cross the room rather than making Charles move. One not-strong arm doesn’t move a wheelchair fast, and Charles has made clear that he’d rather Erik didn’t move his chair.

Azazel’s thoughts have their destination—Argentina—but also their location—Peru, the Sechura Desert, the not-quite-coordinates that place it in his mind, the way his mind maps location in a different way to other people’s—curiosity about Charles’s head and arm, misgivings about Erik’s state of mind—Raven, and that’s a—not a shock really, but—Charles has always drifted through surface thoughts and men have had surface thoughts about Raven for a long time, but never in her original form, never with slick red hair and smoothly pebbled skin like lapis and the sky before twilight. Azazel thinks of her as Mystique. He thinks of Erik as Magneto.

Azazel presses a firm hand to Charles’s shoulder, and Charles's mind is full of voices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting toward the end of this story! Only a few chapters to go! Will go straight on to the next, though :) Next chapter will be 2 days time; I am reasonably certain of how everything comes together in the next few chapters now, so should be able to write them without horrible delays :D
> 
> Thanks and thanks and thanks to ettu, Blu, Kyrene, kongjingying, victoriangirl and NW for comments last chapter <333 You guys are epic <3
> 
> Hope everyone is having an excellent December!


	27. Chapter 27

“Charles? Charles.”

 _He has shadows under his eyes, and he’s thinner—has he been eating?—what’s happened to his arm? He hasn’t lost that too?—is he really going to work with everyone? He’s going to be sensible, he has to be, he’s silly and self-important but he’s smart, and he has to see that Magneto is right—_

Dim, compared to the wall-windows in Peru; all shadows and so many people in half-light—

 _Is the telepath going to be worth the amount of trouble he’s causing? We already have a telepath, and a second might be an advantage but not if there’s going to be more energy expended on coddling him than on building the army—_

More bodies than Charles remembers being here, and probably more minds but they don’t separate easily, and it’s not as simple as a count—

 _The image of another wheelchair, a much older man—granddad—and the memory echo of an instinct to duck and a pain to the side of the head and the sting of betrayal—_

So many thoughts, and none of them deep enough to mire in, the flurry of impressions like a shoal of mackerel or birds taking flight or leaves in the autumn—

 _His eyes are out of focus—why isn’t he responding?—Magneto didn’t say anything about—it’s Charles, his mind can’t be—_

“Charles. Charles. Magneto, what’s—”

Her hand is on his knee—her eyes are in front of his own, amber-cat-eye-cadmium yellow—

—Charles blinks once, twice, and pulls his mind hard back into his body.

“Charles. Are you alright?”

Erik’s voice.

Raven is still crouched in front of him; Erik is at her shoulder.

“Raven." Charles manages a weak smile for his sister. "I’m sorry; I haven’t been in company for a while.”

Her eyes widen, marginally—her lips tighten— _should he still be away? He’s still not recovered—but Magneto wouldn’t bring him back too soon_ —

“I’m alright.” Another, more successful attempt at a smile. Raven looks skeptical. “I’m sorry to hzve worried you, Raven.”

She looks worried another long moment—corners of blue lips sharply curved down, yellow eyes huge and bright—and then it collapses and it’s Raven, cross and impatient and thin like the delicate skin of the throat, so fragile underneath. “Of course you worried me you—” her arms are around him with almost no prior thought involved, and her voice is still sharp but “—you’ve been off in the middle of nowhere recovering for weeks because you can’t keep your head straight and you come back and stare through me like—” _I should have been there with him, he looks so tired, he looks so sick, he’s used to me being there when he’s ill_ —“Are you sure you should be back here? Are you alright now? What happened to your arm?”

And Charles doesn’t realise he’s smiling properly until—

 _What’s he looking so pleased for?_ “What are you looking so—”

“Mystique.”

Erik’s tone is a soft rebuke, but Charles shakes his head, once, at both of them. “I’m fine, Raven.” And, as she casts an almost-childishly almost-baleful look between Erik and Charles and Azazel, Charles adds—“I’m glad to see you, too.”

***

The boy—the boy with the grandfather in the chair and the pain in the side of his head—is called Milton.

Raven ushers him forward with a hand at the base of his neck and introduces him: “Charles, this is Chameleon,”

and Erik rolls his eyes over her shoulder, to himself, not to Charles, and then amends, to Charles, “His name’s Milton. He’s eight.”

Charles knows that his name is Milton, and that he’s eight years old, and that he rather likes Raven’s name for him, which he thinks of as Mystique’s name for him, and as his code name, and as his mutant name. Charles knows that Milton is getting a little better at controlling his colour-changing but not much better, and that he still mostly hates the webbing between his fingers and toes, and that he tries not to hate it because Mystique and Magneto say he shouldn’t, that it’s a gift and he should be proud of it, even if that’s hard. Charles knows that Milton has been alone since he was six, that the pain he remembered when he saw the wheelchair was a porcelain vase shattering against the side of his head, thrown by his war-crippled grandfather; that he still sometimes misses his mother, even as he hates her.

Charles knows that he has to protect this child, so much more than he had to protect Raven, because then he was only a child himself, mostly without power and barely aware of her thoughts and understanding in only the simplest ways, and now he is almost thirty years old and this child has done nothing to deserve the pain and the misery and the self-loathing and the fear and the hatred that Charles knows in him, all as transparent as eight-year-old minds nearly always are.

“I’m Charles Xavier,” he introduces himself, and holds out a hand just as he did to Raven so long ago.

Milton is apprehensive—Milton has never shaken someone’s hand before. He has seen other people do it, but his hands are not normal hands—his hands are wrong; people hate his hands.

Charles smiles as openly as he knows how, and keeps his hand extended, still as he can make it until, tentatively, Milton reaches back his own.

They shake hands loosely—Milton’s hand is very small, as eight-year-old hands are. The webbing folds between his fingers, and doesn’t make his hand feel any different.

When Charles lets go, Milton is smiling too, just a little. The boy rubs his fingers together as he drops his hand to his side.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Charles adds.

Milton grins slowly. “Mystique says you’re a professor. I never met a professor before.”

A professor. No—a doctorate in genetics from Oxford University, not a professor until he teaches, but—how is he going to teach now? He’s wanted by the CIA.

Milton’s eyes are shining, and Charles nods. “I study genetics. Do you know what that means?”

Milton swallows nervously, glances at his hands, thinks about being wrong, and tries—“Why I go the wrong colour? And stuff?”

“Not the wrong colour,” Raven cuts in, voice almost sharp, and Milton flinches, though it’s not what Raven intended. So, so very fragile.

Charles leans down a little, as far as he can, which is not very far. Even in the chair, he’s still taller than Milton. “I look at what makes some people’s eyes blue, and some brown, and some green. I also look at what makes my skin pale, and my sister’s skin blue, and Azazel’s skin red, and yours change colour. And what makes Erik able to work with metal, and me able to hear thoughts, and your hands different. And a lot of other things. Does that make sense?”

Milton nods slowly; swallows. “Magneto says—you teach other stuff too. Like teaching people to use their—gifts—good.”

‘Well,’ Charles thinks, and doesn’t say it, because Milton needs other things more than to have his grammar corrected, and because he’s looking at Erik, and hearing nothing.

“I never met a professor before,” Milton repeats. “I never learned stuff before. I could learn stuff from you but.” It’s halfway between a question and a request and an offer and something else too complicated to follow, even with the thoughts behind it. “Can I call you Professor X? Mystique says I can call you Professor X,” Milton adds.

Charles can’t say no, and this question is easier than the other.

He keeps smiling, and tries not to hear the things in Raven’s mind—what’s in a name, and why she calls the child Chameleon, and how she doesn’t think of Erik as ‘Erik’ anymore at all.

Charles looks at Milton instead of at Raven or at Erik, and nods, “If you like.”

“Professor X,” Milton agrees and, with a smile that’s only a little apprehensive, holds out his webbed hand to shake on it.

***

Charles is back where he was six weeks ago: this plush, impersonal bedroom in shades of white and gold. He’s not in the bed; for all he’s approached the wheelchair with—difficulty—Charles is aware of a fierce, irrational aversion to the idea of returning to bed, even temporarily. He only half-remembers this bed, in this room. That’s the drugs, he knows, and perhaps the pain. Some combination—the way his mind has never been good with morphine. It feels like being buried, though; the room whispers to him of stone wrapped around his legs and metal wrapped around his body, and Charles is moderately determined—with as much energy as he can muster—not to return there. His legs won’t move, but his legs aren’t his mind. His legs were a way of moving, and he will master this other way of moving. His legs have never been an essential part of anything essential to him. His legs don’t change his doctorate. Other things might have complicated any possibility of him becoming a professor, but—he knew that. When he lets himself think about it, really, when he lets himself acknowledge—when he left Oxford with Moira, he meant to come back. But from the moment he met Erik...

Charles was going to be a professor in Oxford because he was basically alone and he loved it, and because it was something he could do, and because he wanted to understand, and because he believed that he could find others like he and Raven.

He’s found them. They’re here. They’re back in Westchester, or he hopes they are, the boys. He’s not going back to Oxford or to any other university but it’s not because of the CIA, or not just because of the CIA. Milton is fixed in his mind, the boy that Erik has found, so very vulnerable and so marvellously eager to learn.

Charles can still be a professor. Just not in quite the same way that he once expected.

Charles isn't sure yet whether he's comfortable with that, but he files it away for later consideration, as he has a dozen things since returning here. What he will do now is important, and complex, but not the immediate priority. The immediate priority is—well, standing by the door, leaning against the doorframe, as he does, in a silent, thoughtless way that Charles is still not used to. He doesn’t want to get used to it.

Erik isn’t speaking, isn’t trying to convince Charles of anything. They are at a point, Charles knows, and is sure that Erik knows, at which they have exhausted all of the relevant discussions. Things have changed since they had those discussions, but Charles thinks Erik knows better than to think he can control the way Charles takes those changes into account. Charles knows better than to think he can change what Erik sees in it all, too—he knows, intellectually—but he also knows that he never knows these things, can’t know these things. Once one allows oneself to know that a thing is impossible…

Charles has never believed in impossible, and he is determined not to start.

They have been here for nearly forty minutes; Charles wonders, with a distant curiosity, what Erik is doing. It is a circular process: Charles watches Erik, which spurs a thought, which is followed through and then filed away for later consideration because right now...Charles has been floating for forty minutes on the abundance of thoughts available to his reach—not a crowding of them, there are only so many people here and many of them are miserable enough that Charles feels, guiltily, that he had best avoid them for now. But it is like breathing again, like the time it takes one to understand food again after starvation, and he is sure that Erik knows that. Erik is giving him time, and trying to give him space, but he’s been leaning against the frame of the closed door saying nothing, watching Charles, for the better part of forty minutes, and Charles can’t help but wonder.

“What is it?”

Erik’s voice should slip under his skin like it always has, like water in soil and a sharp knife, but it can’t, can’t, because he cannot hear it coming and that makes it like a falling tree, like a landslide. The twist of metal.

What is it? Charles almost dismisses the question, but doesn’t. It’s hard, for them to communicate, like this. He has to try. “You’ve been watching me for forty minutes. What are you thinking?”

Erik shifts in his place, half-crosses his arms. “Emma Frost wants to come back here—I’ve had her listening where they imprisoned her. I’m going to tell Azazel to bring her. She hasn’t heard anything about us since we took the group six weeks ago.”

“You’ve been considering that for forty minutes?”

Erik watches Charles a moment—a moment in which Charles is sure he sees something click over in Erik's face, but it's so hard to be sure. “I was thinking about Milton. About Magdalena, who you’ll meet—probably tomorrow. She’s wary of strangers. With good reason.”

Charles doesn’t ask. He’ll find out soon enough—he could reach out and find out right now—and right now, he's sure now, Erik is trying to sell him or, more accurately, he thinks, trying not to try, but not quite managing to stop himself.

Erik presses thumb to forefinger, then the next—missing the long presence of his hateful silver coin, Charles is certain, missing something to let him shift his anger through his fingers. “I was thinking about your sister, and Azazel, and the boys back at your estate, and the man who your sister recruited in Britain yesterday. He creates telepathic illusions.”

Charles waits, and Erik glances at the shut door. “I see them…and I am afraid, Charles. Can you understand that?”

Charles cannot understand anything without his powers—has never learned how—but saying that would be pointless. “You’ve always been afraid.”

For a moment Erik looks as though he might argue, but he lets it pass. Charles has seen his fears.

"I remember my childhood ... the massacres in the ghetto, crouching in basements and—I remember being dragged out, I remember the guards joking as they herded my family to the death trains. Then, it was the Jews. But I watch our people now and I fear that tomorrow—I see the horrors of my childhood, born again, Charles...only this time, Mutants are the victims."

It’s not an unreasonable fear. Charles wishes he could say it were.

Erik meets his eye. “I will not see another people fear what they do not understand and destroy what they fear.”

Charles has no wish to be cruel. But Erik has half a hundred men imprisoned somewhere in this building. “If you destroy what you fear, my friend, then you do not serve that memory well.”

“You would let yourself be torn apart before you would fight.”

Charles is not at all sure that that’s true—nor is he entirely sure it’s not.

“I won’t let that happen. I will safeguard my fellow mutants, Charles. You should help me.”

There’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.

“Standing still while they wipe you from the earth isn’t peace, Charles, it’s suicide.”

“I don’t believe that there has to be an ‘us’ and a ‘them’.”

“We live in reality, Charles, you—” Erik cuts himself short—breathes out. “We don’t need to discuss this now.”

Charles tells himself it’s true. They don't need to discuss it now. Erik isn’t doing anything abominable. He’s locating other mutants and providing for them. It’s no different to what Charles himself had planned. He has men imprisoned, but Charles knows that Milton, at least, hasn’t so much as seen them. Charles hasn’t met the others that Erik has “recruited,” but the child, at least, is not being exposed to violence. And the imprisoned men themselves…well. He doesn't like it, of course. But, for now, right now...they’re not being mistreated, so far as he can tell. Erik wants information from them. Information about plans for violence against mutants, and—Charles isn’t sure he can argue with that. If bringing a score of men here from the US and a score from Russia for him to read their minds allows he and Erik to protect other mutants, to protect the kids, from violence they have done nothing to provoke…

“Do you want to sleep?”

Like the clatter of a sheet of iron.

Charles does not want to lie down, perhaps ever again. “No. No, I’ll—”

Erik is watching, watching with always-hard eyes, even if they’re softer for Charles. Charles runs it through his mind one more time. This is the right thing to do. Erik is wrong, but right now, what he’s doing...isn’t, necessarily.

“Charles?”

“I’ll see the men you’ve brought here. If there are truly plans to hurt people, then we need to know.”

“Now?”

Charles presses his one good hand to the wheel of the chair—sidles awkwardly, very slowly, toward the door of the room. Erik is up immediately, behind the chair more quickly than Charles can do anything anymore. “You’re well enough?”

He’s wheeling the chair to the door already; Charles reaches out to turn the knob before Erik can make him feel completely impotent. “I don’t want people hurt any more than you do, my friend. I simply understand the idea of “people” somewhat differently to you.” Charles shakes his head, raises a quieting hand before Erik can argue. “I’m ready. Let’s get this over with.”

***

Reading the men’s minds is very easy, and very hard.

It’s not something Charles has ever done—deliberately sifting through the thoughts, and not just the thoughts but the detailed memories, of men not just scared but scared of him.

It’s not as bad as it could be. The men are not scared of him in a knowing way. Erik has been obliging, since Charles agreed to this, and they are doing it Charles’s way. The men do not know that their minds are being read. Charles sees no good in further scaring them. They need never know that he’s accessed every inch of them. So the men are scared of him, because they’re scared of everyone here, but they’re not panicked. They’re not blunderingly trying to throw up walls of which they don’t understand the meaning, as they did when he tried to calm them when they arrived. Erik is interrogating them verbally, not particularly assiduously, and Charles is ‘observing’, quietly, and observing more effectively inside of each mind.

It’s not an easy thing to do. When Charles knows a mind, like he knows Erik’s, like, as a child, he knew his mother’s, it’s simple enough to pinpoint any given idea. Mapping a mind is intuitive; it doesn’t require a comprehensive, conscious knowledge of every detail. But doing it from nothing like this, comprehending the completeness of a stranger’s being wholly enough to pinpoint the first time each man knew about the kinds of mutation in which Charles is interested—and very few of them register that word, mutant, mutation, in the foreground of their thoughts, for most it’s freak, or monster, or aberration, or demon, or a host of other personally-informed categories—Erik draws out the ‘interrogations’, and Charles forgets his body, and remembers himself in the space he is best: a thing of the mind, shapeless and vast and powerful, unrestrained by the weaknesses of the body.

There are plans, some horrifyingly ready for execution, some half-formed, some barely ideas. Many, Erik has mentioned knowing of already. Charles sets the details in the infallible store of his memories regardless, a tidy array of unrealised horrors amounting to a dozen genocides.

There are a hundred reasons, though there are only fifty-seven men. They are scared, and violent in their fear. They are convinced that they are right; that violence is necessary in order to protect the majority. They are convinced that they are right; that violence is the only way to protect themselves. Some of them, not all, are simply hateful, of what is different, but that comes down to fear at the heart of it. Perhaps there are not a hundred reasons at all. Perhaps there are just enough.

When Erik wheels Charles back down the north corridor, away from the imprisoned men, Charles doesn’t say much.

“You’re sure you have everything?” Erik asks, and

“I’m certain,” Charles replies.

They sit in the central room, the communal area with its oversupply of lounge chairs, or Charles sits, in his wheelchair, and Erik stands, watches. Charles writes it all down; writes every officially-sanctioned plan and briefly-discussed option and private imagining in a neat list with details, scribes it all by hand in orderly cursive. Erik moves to watch over his shoulder, after a time, and for a moment Charles doesn’t look for fear that Erik will be smug, self-righteously smug, that he was right in these imagined betrayals of humanity, but only for a moment; Charles knows Erik, and he doesn’t need to hear his mind to know that he isn’t smug. Erik is many things, many of them troubling, but Charles is confident that he will never be pleased to hear plans to slaughter his kind. In this, Erik will never be pleased to be right. Charles still doesn’t look, doesn’t try to turn over his shoulder, but he keeps writing, and lets Erik read as he goes, and thinks that maybe they are mourning this together, in their own ways.

When he is done, he holds both of John Calker’s hands in one of his own. The draw is still there, the poisonous intensity with which he knows this man, but there are half of a hundred other minds here, and his thirst is more than sated, and soon the doctor will be gone.

“Thank you, Charles,” Calker half-whispers, terribly earnest, like a vow, and he means it, Charles can hear that, and he knows that the doctor wouldn’t bother with anything but truth for him anyway. Mostly, though, John Calker is just desperate to be home, more desperate now than ever, now that it’s close.

Charles clasps his hands more tightly, and summons a smile, and shakes his head. “Thank you, doctor. For everything. I’m sorry to have—disrupted your life…for so long.”

He’s right about Calker—the man doesn’t bother pretending the nicety of a ‘welcome’ or a ‘not at all’. He lets Charles hold his hands, though, and thinks, as deliberately as he can, in the messy way that one not a telepath knows how to think, about it not being Charles’s fault. It takes a wondering, awestruck moment for Charles to believe it. Once, this man was terrified of his telepathy. Erik is so certain that people will always succumb to fear, that fear cannot be changed, but Charles knows, he _knows_...

 _Thank you_ , Charles offers, one more time, silently, and awkwardly, but definitely, his doctor almost smiles.

Then Charles nods once, releases Calker's hands, and turns to Azazel and Erik over the doctor’s shoulder. “Take him home.”

Charles listens sharply to Azazel’s mind the whole three steps it takes him to reach the doctor and disappear, but there’s no lie there. He disappears thinking of John Calker’s suburban street in New Jersey, and Charles shuts his eyes and lets himself find some peace in the moment. Perhaps he will never know another as he knows John Calker, and if so, it will be a good thing. Now, the man is safe, and Charles thinks he can believe he will be happy.

For ten seconds, then twenty, it is only he and Erik, Erik watching him, then watching each other, the list of human hates between them on the table.

“You must be exhausted,” Erik murmurs. “You should sleep.”

Charles nods non-committally. He is exhausted. Perhaps he will sleep in his chair. The idea of returning to a bed is still…

And then Azazel reappears between them, and Charles has had no reason to plumb the depths of his thoughts, but now this task is done and the surface thoughts, the conscious and almost-conscious things, have moved on.

Azazel is nodding to Erik and then moving away, and Erik is raising an eyebrow at Charles, still waiting for an answer, and Azazel’s thoughts are unguarded and untroubled: the doctor is home and safe as instructed, now to dispatch with the men— _vile crawlers_ —in the cells.

Azazel will do this with relish, killing the men, and Charles can see, can understand why—the thoughts have deeper hooks, cruelties done over a liftetime, and Azazel’s mutation is not one that could ever have been hidden; and newer hatreds—Azazel is in love with Raven, Charles thinks, or close to, and there is a remarkable bulk of fury that these loathsome, low things would plot to hurt her.

Every one of the men will die—the ones who proposed plans and the ones just in the room, not brave or righteous, perhaps, but mostly just scared.

Azazel is walking up the north corridor, and Charles doesn’t take his eyes from the space between he and Erik, doesn’t give any sign, as he reaches out and takes Azazel’s mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this was late again! Ended up rather longer than expected, as you can see :) This is such a turning point for Charles, and in some ways his perspective is more difficult than Erik's to write. He's such a close balance of almost divinely wise and merciful and etc, but still a young guy who's just finished his doctorate and who is capable of really significant, disturbing moral compromises, even though 98% of the time he makes the right call. It's very easy to fall into Charles the magical Christ-figure, and I find the balance challenging, in a good way :D
> 
> Erik's words this chapter about his fears of a new Holocaust are partly a mishmash of lines from the comics; there are so many really beautiful but relatively little-known lines in canon about Erik's grief and his fears, and it's nice to pay tribute to them a bit, though I had to adapt to make them fit the timeline set up in First Class. So if you think you recognise bits of those two lines, you're right :D
> 
> As always, massive thanks to those who took time to chat with me last chapter: furius, maimo, Fin-Phoenix, JunkyPerv and Kyrene <3 Next chapter *should* be Friday, though as always, take that with a grain of salt ;)


	28. Chapter 28

There is a moment in which Charles is, absurdly, thinking mostly about how surprised he is that he has the adrenaline to jump into this—

—and then he has, figuratively, one eye in Azazel’s eyes and one in his own and he’s breathing through it, because he doesn’t know what exactly he’s going to do but he knows that right now, he needs for Erik not to realise he’s doing it.

Charles doesn’t have a lot of experience in this. He's not going for sainthood, he’s meddled with more than a few minds, but he’s always felt as though there’s a line, somewhere between momentary changes and extended mind control. This is another man's body, and he doesn't just take other men's bodies. Under normal circumstances. So controlling Azazel’s body and his own at once—requires a very great deal of concentration.

He’s walking Azazel down the hall—up the hall, toward the cells—and Erik is still watching him, watching Charles, his body, this body, in the chair—

“Shall I wheel you back to your bedroom?”

There are too many ideas behind that question, but they’re easier than usual to ignore, with his mind split in two. “Yes,” Charles manages, and distracted will pass for tired. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea, my friend. Thank you.” Is Erik still a friend? —this is good, letting Erik wheel him back, because Erik will underestimate him and—this is a line, crossing a line, deceiving Erik—he can stop this, he can talk, they can talk—but this is too far, he’s gone too far with Erik, he’s letting Erik take him too far and it’s time to—

“Charles?”

Erik has one hand on the wheelchair but he’s peering down at Charles’s face, and Charles can’t afford distraction. Walking Azazel and talking to Erik he can do; thinking at the same time as both, no. Thinking can wait. Thinking can wait a few minutes.

Charles curls a weak smile, and feels sick at himself. “I think we could all use some sleep.”

“Oh?” But Erik suspects nothing; Erik is wheeling him down the east hall, toward the comfortable bedroom that, apparently, Erik already thinks of as belonging permanently to Charles—or has he just decided to act as though it's a permanent arrangement, in the hope that it will become so? Could Erik truly believe that—everything—can go on like this indefinitely? Hiding in a South American bunker acting as though he's at war, and expecting Charles to be in on it? Erik isn't delusional, Charles is certain of that, or he wasn't the last time Charles could know, but his sense of logic _is_ very much warped by his understanding of the world. Not knowing is infuriating, and not thinking for a few minutes is easier said than done.

Charles risks a moment's focus on Azazel—stops walking—surveys the corridor—selects a door that leads to an unoccupied room—and stows Azazel’s body in there, out of sight, where he can draw back and leave it just possessed—best not to think about that, for now, 'possessed,' because he's hardly been left any choice—

And back to himself. What was Erik asking? Charles has to consciously trace the conversation back. Was it seconds ago that he asked, or a minute? Another poor imitation of a smile. “I’m exhausted. You look exhausted. Raven was downright silly when I arrived back earlier.”

“I’m not sure that means she’s tired,” Erik deadpans, and Charles almost smiles for real, but he’s not enough here. Part with Azazel and part here and part in the falling glass flurry of this is wrong, this is Erik and he means well and deceiving him is wrong and he means more to me than this and—he’s going to kill sixty men, it’s not okay, not for Erik, not for anyone, and—this is wrong, Azazel is a human being and taking his body is—Erik will be furious when he finds out, can I talk him down from this? What options are there if—

The wheelchair stops moving. Erik reaches over his shoulder to turn the doorknob.

For the short journey from door to bedside, Charles focuses forcefully and single-mindedly on his hands in his lap. It's disconcerting, how easily the order in his mind crumbles when strained.

At the bedside, Erik steps awkwardly away from the chair. “Shall I…”

Charles can get out of the chair himself. He _can_. On the other hand, he has only one arm right now. Charles shuts his eyes a moment, and tells himself not to be a child. “Thank you, Erik. If you don’t mind.”

Erik lifts him very gently, very carefully, like something fragile and precious and not something powerful and lying to him. His arm behind Charles back, under his shoulders, is a warm, solid weight, and a familiar hand curled around his arm, and murmured words. Charles doesn’t feel the arm under his knees. Erik stands slowly, carefully, strong, strong arms that Charles knows could snap him in two as easily as they lift him. Erik’s strength, his physical strength, is obvious and forward and impossible to ignore, though Charles has never actually tried to ignore it. It’s erotic, in the most simple ways, and there’s a big part of Charles that still sees it that way but right now, right now with his head in pieces and he’s lying to Erik, he’s deceiving Erik, maybe Erik has been driving him mad for more than a month but Erik hasn’t lied to him and he can’t do this, this is—

Erik lowers him to the bed so, so carefully, wordless, a soft noise of concentration in his throat. He slides his hand from under Charles’s back like a caress, the flat of his palm across shoulder blades and vertebrae, asks, “Alright?” as though Charles can’t shift by himself, then lifts the dead weight of Charles's legs again and lays them down differently as though it matters. It’s all a lie. All of it.

Charles lies another smile. “Thank you.”

Erik says nothing for a moment, then lays the fingertips of his left hand impossibly warm across Charles’s right cheek, just a touch, sensitive, so sensitive with barely being touched in weeks, and then his palm across Charles’s jawline, more gentle than he would have been once, _before_ , too soft.

“I am—” Erik so rarely hesitates in anything. “—very glad to have you with me.”

Turning his face into Erik’s touch isn’t a lie, isn’t even a choice, is a need more than anything because wrong or right and lies or not this is Erik, and Charles thinks there is perhaps nothing Erik could do that he could not forgive. Charles turns his face into Erik's touch and it's as true as anything he's ever known but Charles can’t look—can’t say anything, not that would be true.

“We will get through this,” Erik promises, completely sincere, absolutely confident.

And Charles nods, Erik’s hand still warm, close on his skin, because they will get through this, somehow—Charles just isn’t sure how.

Isn't sure anymore, in an unarticulated, half-denied way, that it will be together.

***

Lying in bed in the dark, alone, once Erik has left the room, Charles lets go of Erik, and lets go of his own body, and presses his control of Azazel to the corner of his concentration, and tries to find space to think.

What are the facts?

Erik is—everything. Erik is the only person in his life.

Erik is going to kill sixty people. Possibly thinks they’re already dead.

Charles can stop that happening. He can take the men out of danger, through Azazel.

Erik would be furious.

The most important of those is not hard to pick. Charles knows what his choice is here. It’s not negotiable. There’s nothing to think about, really. He made this choice on the beach when he tried to wrestle the helmet from Erik, and he doesn’t regret that choice, and he’s not going to make a different choice now. He can take the men imprisoned in the north corridor away from here before Erik can kill them, and that’s something that he has to do.

What about their plans? The list is still very clear in Charles’s mind, will be for a long time, perhaps forever, with his memory as it is. The list is—abominable, and most of it is not fantasy. There are plans that were already in motion, before Erik abducted those responsible, and others that their creators would no longer hesitate to propose, or fail to find support for. The men Charles read in the cells hate mutants, unreservedly. Some of that hate is unfounded, some the result of the past weeks. Erik is not without reason in wanting to kill them. Sent back to their lives and jobs, they would…what they would do is unthinkable. But...yes. Charles can wipe their memories. It wouldn't be so hard. Most have only very recent experience with mutants. Erase a few months…

Perhaps he should go to Erik now, propose it as a compromise. Erasing the men's memories of mutants would be an effective safeguard, and there’s no reason…

Charles rolls over a little, a laborious, painful process that doesn’t make his body feel any less heavy, mired in soft mattress and plush covers. Erik knows that Charles can erase memories. It's not a solution that's taken Charles hours to think of; on the contrary, it's an obvious answer. And Erik has, clearly, thought about how to handle these men—he’s had them here six weeks waiting for Charles to be well enough to read them.

No, Erik won’t compromise. And now, if he suggests it, having already interfered with Azazel…

Charles has no way to stop Erik killing the men, if he knows that Charles has stopped Azazel from doing so.

Erik cannot know, then.

Erik will be furious. Does that matter? It does, of course—it matters to Charles, because Erik is—but. It’s not a thing that’s avoidable. He can’t let Erik kill the men, and he can’t talk Erik out of it, so…Erik will forgive him. He’ll have to. He’ll be angry, but—

—but what? But he’ll get over it and they’ll live happily ever after?

Charles grits his teeth, rolls back a little, stares at the ceiling.

What about next time? When it happens again? Building an army, building an army is what’s in all of their heads, Raven's and Azazel's and Riptide's, and maybe Charles can’t hear Erik but it’s not hard to see where the idea comes from. Erik’s telling them that they’re building an army, which means that Erik wants to start a war, or at least to commit acts of violence that he can sell as a war to the people who follow him.

Charles can’t be a part of that. He _can’t_. Not even for Erik. Least of all, perhaps, for Erik—because it’s not what Erik needs. _War_ is never going to make Erik happy, not the full-blown apocalypse that Azazel imagines and not the more contained acts of violence that Charles hopes are the extent of Erik's plans. None of it is what Erik needs. But making him see that…

It’s the sharp truth at the end of all lines of logic, the one that Charles doesn’t want to know. He needs to leave here, and not on friendly terms, with plans for Erik to drop by Westchester tomorrow. Erik is making a base here from which to launch some form of war, and Charles needs to leave.

He needs to leave Erik.

Well.

Alright.

His first impulse is that he needs to get Raven, but Raven…doesn’t even think of herself as Raven anymore. She wouldn’t come willingly. He’d have to kidnap her. Is he going to lock her up? A big part of him says yes, he’s going to take her home and lock her in her room until she comes to her senses, but—Raven isn’t a child anymore. Hasn’t been for a while, maybe, though Charles knows he's done a rubbish job of noticing. And even if the moral highground does give him some sort of right to overrule the choice she’s making here—how could he keep her? Azazel…is in his control for now, but—Azazel has a right to his own mind. And the things he’s heard today in Raven’s mind, and in Azazel’s…Charles isn’t really bothered by the intimate thoughts of others, is well and truly desensitized, but with that comes realism. He could kidnap Raven back home, lock her in her room, and Azazel would come find her. She wants to be here, and Charles can’t stop her.

Erik _and_ Raven, then. Alright.

Everyone here has made their choice, he can't pretend not to know that. Choices were made over a month ago in Cuba, and not wanting there to be two sides here doesn't mean there isn't, however hard he can try to blur the line. Charles can't talk Erik out of this, and he can't take these people away from Erik. Except, perhaps…yes. The boy. Milton. Charles reaches out, very softly, and the child is there, is here, in the building. He’s not asleep, though he’s sleepy. He’s eight years old. He doesn’t—he made a choice to come here, yes, contacted Raven, Erik explained it, responded to an advert of sorts but—he’s eight years old. He’s a child. He doesn’t understand this; he _can’t_. And he doesn’t belong in—

—if Erik is trying to recruit an army, is trying to start a war, then Milton does not belong here. That, surely, is close enough to fact. There’s an objection to it, Charles's own logic, or perhaps illogic, because it’s an objection in defense of Erik—Erik would never expose this child to war. Charles can’t believe that of him. And Erik hasn’t, it’s a fair defense—Milton hasn’t seen the men imprisoned. Milton hasn’t seen any violence. Milton hasn’t been told anything terrible. Erik’s done right by him, Erik is a _good man_ and that might be what hurts most of all, Charles thinks, that Erik _is_ the man to break this cycle, has suffered so much, knew such horrors in his childhood, but doesn’t want to crush this child into his own image, has never been like that, Erik wants to save people and Charles believes in that, Charles loves him for that, loves it in him and loves _him_ but…

But Milton hates the family that hurt him, hard as it is on him, and how long will it take for that to shift, for that to become what it is in Erik?—for it to be that terrible oversimplification that drives him: people not like us hurt people like us. People not like us will always hurt people like us.

How long is this timeline? How long will Erik do this?

Everything that Charles knows about Erik says forever, if he has to, and it’s another non-negotiable fact, another thing he can’t change, because he _knows_ Erik, and what he knows isn’t wrong.

Erik will fight forever, if he can.

In a few years, Milton will look less like a child, and a few years will be nothing to Erik.

Charles takes a deep breath in and out, and another, gathers willpower as much as energy. Then he presses his palms into the duvet, and pushes himself up to sit.

First, the men in the cells, their memories. Then Azazel to take them home. He can find Milton while Azazel is doing that. Then Azazel can take them both to Westchester. He’ll leave Azazel with a message for Erik. Erik will probably come anyway, but that’s fine. They can talk then. Tomorrow, or later tonight, more likely, in Westchester. For now, he has sixty men to save, and a little boy.

That has to matter more. That does matter more. Charles hates it, and hates himself, and hates Erik, and hates everything that’s hurt Erik to make him this way, but—but this does matter more.

Charles shuts his eyes, and tries to believe that Erik will forgive him. Then he shifts his weight to his arms with a clenched jaw and slides tightly, precisely, but calmly, out of bed and into his chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, penultimate chapter. I still might end up making it two more lol, but planning on one at present. I am planning to write it tomorrow and post it on Wednesday, but realistically it's probably more likely to be Thursday or Friday ;)
> 
> Xmas fic this year is going to be HP, but I'm thinking of doing XMFC for new years - would people prefer canon or this 'verse? I don't have any real ideas at the moment, so if you guys have a preference, I'll go with that, since you're awesome <3 (I fail so hard at updating on time lol, I have to try to give something back eventually XD)
> 
> Next chapter is going to be sort of heart-wrenching to write ;_;, for all the reasons you are not thinking :P, so massive appreciation as always goes out to the fabulous people who comment and let me flail at them - thanks for last chapter to kongjingying, Kyrene, Celina, tzzzz, Blu, and Junky, and to new commenters DB2020, azryal, and amber1053! You guys make my day, every day <3333


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So :) I've been a little nervous about posting this 'cause I'm afraid some of you might reach through screens and smite me with telepathic readerly wrath :P Hopefully not? :D In my defence, I did warn you - this is very much an intermediate ending, as there is more to come in this 'verse. Next fic will be up before New Year's! For now, though, the end of this part of the boys' story. Hope you enjoy!

The first stage is easy.

It takes concentration, yes, controlling Azazel’s mind and his own and each of the prisoners, one by one, three minds at once, but he’s alone and it’s quiet and his own mind doesn’t take much energy. It’s not something he’s done before, wiping a man’s memory, but it’s really no different to implanting a thought, or overriding one. It’s implanting the idea that a memory is not there, overriding the memory with blank in the same way that he overrides Azazel’s intention to walk to the cells with an intention to stay standing still and silent in an empty room.

Erik should be sleeping now; however driven he is, Erik is only human, and he does sleep. Charles has watched him sleep. The others, those Charles can hear, were under the impression some time ago that their 'leader' was going to sleep, so. Perhaps it’s incautious, but Charles has decided not to be worried about the possibility of Erik walking in on this deceit. It would be a pointless worry, and Charles needs his concentration. There’ll be time to worry about Erik again once he’s freed these men and taken Milton back to Westchester. For now…

Once he’s got the hang of it, three men done, four, Charles begins to wheel himself across the room, opens the door, starts down the hall, working on the men as he goes. It’s good that it’s night; the men aren’t panicking yet. Charles isn’t sure he can get through all close-to-sixty of them without any noticing that their cohorts are becoming disoriented one by one, but for now, it’s going smoothly. He impresses quiet upon each one as he leaves the mind, a sort of temporary stupor to cover the panic that would erupt if each man found himself in a crowded cell with no memory of getting there. By the time Charles reaches the lounge, the centre of the complex, it takes only seconds to work on each man, the markers familiar, the period of time similar for each. They will forget vast periods of time, months, some close to a year. That will affect their lives, no doubt, their families, but it will protect the would-be-victims of the plans Charles had drawn from their minds and catalogued that afternoon, and that’s the more important concern.

Charles sits in his wheelchair in the lounge for four minutes, give or take a span of seconds.

And then no one in the United States security forces, or the Soviet security forces, knows anything about ‘mutants’.

Charles draws out of the last mind not back to his own but just as far as Azazel. The man’s own will is subdued, pooling unconscious somewhere beneath the weight of Charles’s suggestions. Sending him down the corridor to the cells is easy. It takes Charles a moment to decide what instruction, exactly, to give. It would be ideal to send each man to his own home, but he would have to extract locations from each mind, or impress upon them all to be truthful to Azazel, and then have Azazel take each individually, and perhaps it would be easier to send them in groups back to where they were snatched—certainly it would be quicker, and perhaps everyone else is asleep, certainly all minds within his range are quiet, but someone could wake, and maybe efficiency is not a wasted consideration.

When Azazel reaches the cells, he gathers several men together, lays hands on two of them, and disappears, a long way north, to an empty room where, six weeks ago, a meeting of high level security officials disappeared without trace.

Charles draws back slowly into himself; checks that his injunction to Azazel is holding without his mind to maintain it, when Azazel is so far beyond his reach, a continent away. It holds. Another six men disappear.

Charles takes a moment to look only through his own eyes; to see dim, indistinct shapes of furniture and faintly lit doorways.

Then—the boy’s mind is easiest of all, delicate and half-formed, and it takes only the faintest touch, the lightest suggestion to wake him; to rouse him; to have him wandering up the south corridor, toward the lounge, on tiny little legs.

***

It feels very late when Mystique lifts her head to a shift of sound from across the hall.

She’s reading, or rather, dozing with a book, because yes, it’s her turn to keep guard on the monsters in the cells but they’re just men, human men, and they’ve been here six weeks and demonstrated no ability to bend bars or pick deadlocks, so. She’s pretty sure Azazel’s killing them soon anyway. The plan’s something like that. Good riddance. How dare they.

She flicks a few pages. The paper still feels just a little different on her skin, just a little more intense, less sensitive, in some ways, because her blue skin doesn’t get paper cuts, it’s thicker, but at the same time more sensitive, to detail, to the sort of pores in the paper, to the edge of the leaf before it flicks out. The difference has always been there, but there are so many things she’s been discovering these weeks since…so many things she’d never done in her own skin. So many things she’s been missing, spending most of her time wrapped in 'normal' flesh. It’s like suddenly being real, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but—it’s like discovering that she’s been wound in cling wrap most of her life and there’s this whole new level of sensation and contact and feeling when there’s nothing in between, nothing slowing her senses, no fear of slipping and no…no pretending to be something less than what she is. No pretending to be like the scum bags across the hall. Weak and stupid.

There’s definitely something happening over there. She almost doesn’t bother looking; it’s not loud enough to really bother her, and if they bother each other, well, that’s their problem. Still, they could be quietly maiming each other or something, which she’s pretty sure isn’t part of Magneto’s plan, so.

Mystique sets her book down, pages open, spine up, on the table, and stretches out of her chair. This is something she’s always known felt better in her real body, ever since she was a little girl. The stretch of muscles, the shift of skin. She used to be ashamed of it.

When she opens the door, it’s Azazel; there, and then not there. Mystique leans against the wall by the door and waits for him to reappear.

“He’s given the order to kill them?”

Azazel turns slowly, like he’s surprised but distracted, startled in slow motion.

It’s a bit weird. Maybe he’s sick? Mystique rolls her body off the wall to stand straight. “You okay?”

Azazel stares at her a moment, and then goes back to his task; he’s gathering a small group of the Russians, placing hand in hand. They’re not resisting, and Mystique is kind of really creeped out for a moment before it makes sense; Magneto must have drugged them, or maybe had Charles slow them down or something. She sort of wishes someone had told her. She could be in bed, if they don’t need to be watched anymore. Still. Azazel lays one hand on one man’s shoulder, the other on another. Mystique takes a few steps closer. “Where are you dropping them?”

Azazel disappears—one second, two—less than two, and he pops back into existence. It makes her smile—it still makes her smile, every time. He’s magnificent. More powerful than any of them, maybe, she thinks, though she doesn’t say that where Magneto can hear.

“Are you taking them to the ocean? Somewhere the bodies won’t cause a stir?”

Azazel does the weird thing again—the sort of slowed-down response. His face is kind of…slack. “North. Virginia. Where I found them.”

He’s turning around again before Mystique’s done frowning. “Does he _want_ the bodies to cause a stir? I thought the point was to get them off our backs? I suppose they won't know who, but...”

Azazel’s gathering another group. They’re maybe two-thirds gone already. The idea of all the bodies piling up in a CIA facility sort of makes Mystique a bit ill. “Azazel? Hey. Are you sure that’s right?”

Again with the slow turn. “Put them back safely where I found them.”

“What?”

He’s turned around again, another group clustered.

“What do you mean, safely back where—Azazel, hey.”

He disappears. Reappears.

Mystique takes the last steps to the bars, peers through. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Nothing—gathering another little group of men.

“Azazel.”

Hand in hand in hand.

“Are you even awake?”

Six men, hand to hand, and then Azazel steps into place to complete the little circle and—

It takes that long for the idea to occur.

When he reappears, face blank, eyes empty, still not responding, she knows.

***

Charles is back in his own mind when he hears the sound.

Azazel is taking the men home, and Milton is on his way to Charles, and it’s a deep breath of air to sit in his own space. It’s more than he’s ever done before, this, and it’s an exertion, but it’s done, and soon Azazel will return here, and take he and Milton away, and then Charles can sleep. For now, he sits very small in his own mind, safe from the touches of others’ thoughts, sleeping thoughts, dreams and half-formed things; secure in his own head, his own thoughts, his own senses. Ceiling lights dimmed for night. Seats. Doorways. The list, the paper, is not on the table any more. Erik must have taken it with him.

It’s a very tidy room, none of the clutter of being lived in. Erik has them acting more and more like an organisation rather than a—well, whatever they were before. It’s common sense, really; there’s Riptide and Azazel, who have been militant for years, and the couple of new people were recruited within this sort of a framework, so really it’s just Erik and Raven who’ve changed, and Erik…well, it’s not much of a change for Erik.

It’s a scream that echoes down the north hall, which is probably the only reason Charles hears it—he’s not paying much attention, and he’s shut thoughts off entirely.

“Magneto! Magneto! Erik!”

It takes a moment, but when Charles blinks once or twice, brings himself back to full wakefulness, drags alertness back from the quiet space in his mind, he can hear footsteps, running footsteps.

The thoughts take another half a breath. Raven.

“Erik! Magneto! Now!”

She bursts into the lounge at a sprint and jerks to a halt that would have stumbled in her human form. She stares at Charles, eyes wide, for only a second before opening her mouth again.

“Magneto! Wake up!”

She’s off again, toward the east corridor.

He could stop her.

“Magneto! Erik! Erik!”

She’s running down the east corridor, and he could stop her, he needs to stop her, Erik will be furious if he wakes up and this is important, this is more important than Erik or Raven or _Charles_ , yes, this is more important, there are lives at stake, so…

He promised her he’d never do this, promised her so long ago.

Somewhere down the east corridor, not far down, a door flies open.

Erik’s voice isn’t loud at this distance, but it’s not that far and he’s not being that quiet. “What?”

“Magneto, you have to—Charles—” she’s hysterical. “He’s—Azazel—Charles—”

They’re walking back down the corridor, jogging, really. Erik isn’t replying—isn’t bothering, Charles knows, knows Erik, isn’t wasting time because she’s hysterical and Erik believes in doing everything himself, and more than that, just does it, like it’s part of him, a lesson burned in deep, better to act himself than to wait for others when others could turn against him, were maybe against him from the start.

He could still do it. Raven hasn’t said anything, really. He could just make her quiet, and then maybe he can distract Erik, long enough for Azazel to finish in the cells, long enough for him to grab Milton. It wouldn’t be—she’s lost her mind, clearly, thinking that this—it’s an old promise, made in different circumstances and really, he’s utterly betraying Erik, does it matter if he goes into Raven’s mind, just enough to quiet her?

Erik reaches the room at a jog, and stops. “What have you done?”

Charles has no idea what to say.

Behind him, Milton sends out a little mental flurry of confusion as he reaches the lounge and sees everyone awake and agitated.

Charles pulls his mind back a little, away from Milton, and Raven, and Azazel almost finished in the cells, back far enough to take a breath. These aren’t enemies—since when does he have enemies? _Erik_ has enemies; that’s his problem. This is Erik and Raven, and he’s not going into Raven’s mind, and he’s not lying to Erik. ‘What to say’ is that simple. What he's 'done' is simple. He meets Erik's glare. “The right thing.”

“He’s done something to Azazel.” Raven is still breathing hard, on the edge of sobbing, and how long is it since he’s seen her cry?

“Charles…” Erik’s voice is warning, but not threatening—possibly it is intended to be threatening. Erik isn’t a threat. Erik is a hurt, confused man who Charles knows better than this.

“Whass going on?” Milton is confused, still half-asleep, but oddly, wonderfully confident. Not scared. No one has ever hurt him here.

“I think Azazel’s taking the prisoners back to the CIA.” Raven does look scared, and angry, and hurt.

And then Erik—Erik. Erik’s face is thrown half in shadow by the helmet. It cuts down so close by his face, and the overhead lights are very harsh. Someone's switched them properly on. Erik’s face is simple, which is unusual for Erik. Erik’s face is disbelief, and hurt, and fury, but mostly hurt, at least in Charles’s eyes.

And then Azazel appears at Charles’s shoulder, Westchester already a familiar point in his mind.

 _No!_ He hasn’t got Milton, Milton’s still ten feet away in the doorway. It’s not words—not all thoughts are words—not even an image. Perhaps it’s a feeling or perhaps some deeper seizing of control but Azazel is across the room at Milton’s side as Charles looks back to Erik and sees a magazine of bullets, heavy and metal and dully reflecting the downlight, hurtling past, not meant for Charles—Erik doesn’t miss—and Charles doesn’t need Erik’s thoughts to know it’s for Azazel, not to kill, Erik wouldn’t, but the only way to stop Azazel is to knock him out and Azazel’s hand is on the boy’s shoulder and it doesn’t need words but it is a word, and more than that, an imposing of will in a single thought— _Go!_ —and Azazel is gone, in the second before the weight of bullets flies through the space where his head had been to slam a crater in the wall and ringing in Charles’s ears.

Milton is gone, too. Gone safely to Westchester.

For a moment, everything is very silent—all of their ears are ringing, perhaps.

And then Raven is screaming, something incoherent at Charles, and Erik’s weapon of the moment is rebounding back across the room—stops for a heartbeat in Erik’s hand—and then slams into Raven’s head, harder than a man could punch, hard enough to send her flying. Erik catches her before she hits the ground. She's a dead weight in his arms.

Charles can’t breathe.

Erik lowers Raven's body to the ground carefully but efficiently, on his feet again before Charles can even begin to process—

“What is wrong with you?”

It’s the incongruity of the question more than anything, the sheer ridiculousness of Erik asking _him_ that question when Erik has just—that lets Charles breathe out, breathe in again, and find some trace of sensible thought.

He can still hear Raven. She’s not dead. She’s not conscious, but her mind is still working, quiet and pre-verbal, the spark of things maintaining breath and heartbeat.

“Do you want us all to die?”

And that leaves Erik.

“You’re not naïve, Charles, I know you better than that. You know that those men will do the things they—”

“I took their memories.”

“You. Charles, they’ll think of more, you—” Wide-eyed horror, slack-jawed disbelief, subtle, because Erik is, but...“How can you—?”

For all they've done together at every end of the emotional spectrum, it’s perhaps the first time that Charles has seen Erik truly lost for words. Good. “They don’t remember us. They don’t know that we exist. Problem solved.”

Erik's face is hard. “No. I’m not willing to hide forever. Not everyone _can_ hide forever. Hiding isn’t a solution, Charles, and—”

“And killing them is?”

“Yes.” Like a leaden thing between them—the insurmountable thing. “Yes. Killing them is a solution. Killing them is what works.”

Charles looks away. He can’t hear Erik, not anymore, and without his mind, there’s just the hardness in his eyes that believes that with all the force of experience and all of the hate in his heart. It might be bearable in someone else. In Erik… “Raven is loyal to you.”

“I know. She doesn’t have a helmet.”

I would never, Charles almost says, but that indignation is enough to pull his eyes back to Erik and then he can’t, because Erik knows, knows what he wants to say and knows the hypocrisy in it as well as Charles does, and knows as well as Charles does that yes, he would, if he had to. Just as he would do it to Erik, if he had to. Just as he would have done it on the beach, had he managed to grab the helmet.

And then Azazel pops back into existence with the faintest sound and some small displacement of air, and the great lumped weight of bullets slams into his head right as he lays his hand on Charles’s shoulder.

***

Charles is back in the bedroom when Azazel appears.

He’s not in bed—there’s no one else on the base, the unconscious bodies and those woken from sleep down the south corridor all driven away in a truck with Erik at the wheel. Charles watched through Riptide’s eyes, considered doing something, stopping them, getting Azazel back somehow; didn’t. Erik would only knock them all out.

So Charles is the only one left in the underground base, the only one left in range of his telepathy, and it’s too familiar for comfort. So he’s in his chair, despite his exhaustion, carefully not listening to the silence.

When Azazel appears, it’s three hours since they drove away.

Azazel is wearing the helmet.

He places his hand on Charles’s shoulder, and Charles doesn’t try to fight him. Charles can't win a physical contest.

“Where are we going?”

Azazel wraps his other hand around one handle of the chair, to make sure that it comes too.

Then they are facing the ocean, through great glass windows, and it’s the west coast, so dawn rises over the other side of the house, but by the paling blue of the sky, and the shading of pink in the clouds, the sun is rising.

***

It doesn’t make sense.

Charles is an intelligent man. He’s not naïve, for all he gives that impression. And he _knows_ everything that Erik knows. He gave Erik the list, of the plans, the plans that Erik had known would be there, in their heads but—seeing them on paper…

It doesn’t make sense.

How could Charles take their side? There’s the easy answer, the simple out—he’s lost his mind—but it’s an excuse, and Erik isn’t a child. Perhaps Charles has lost his mind. If so, it’s Erik’s fault, for failing to realise the effect it might have on Charles, being isolated in his recovery. It doesn’t make a difference. The facts, as they stand now, are simple—Charles has seen what is at stake, seen proof that they’re at war, that if they fail to fight they will be slaughtered, and still he chose…

This is a war. It’s a sudden war, a war he didn’t know he was fighting until six weeks ago, but it _is_ a war. Children are being murdered. More than likely, adults are being murdered too, though he hasn’t heard of any as yet. Once they have more people, once they find the others, he will, no doubt, hear those stories. And perhaps Charles has eliminated the most dangerous knowledge of them for now, but it’s possible that intelligence exists in other nations. Regardless, the US, and the USSR, will find them again in time. The same plans will arise. The same moves toward genocide. That cannot happen. Erik will not allow that to happen.

He is, _they are_ , stronger than those who would see them dead. Mutants _can_ take control before it comes to that. He can do this. He can stop it happening again. This time, this time, he will stop the death camps before they can even be built.

But Charles…Charles won’t help him. Charles seems intent on _fighting_ him. Charles will have to be stopped.

He’ll understand, in time. Even if he has lost his mind, though hopefully, no, Erik has to believe he hasn’t…Charles will understand, when it’s done. That this is the only way to make him safe, to make them all safe. And in the meantime…stopping him is simple enough.

***

It’s a west coast, the coast of Peru, so the sun sets over the ocean.

Charles watches it from his chair, on the balcony.

Erik hasn’t been here, since last night in Argentina. Perhaps he won’t. Charles isn’t sure. He’s angry, he must be, but he does care, Charles knows that. Still, perhaps this time it’s too much. Perhaps Erik won’t forgive him.

It doesn’t matter, really, other than sentimentally. Whether Erik comes to talk or not, what Charles has to _do_ now is steadyingly obvious.

He has to get out of here. Not just because there’s no one else here, and he will lose his mind if he has to live in isolation indefinitely. Erik has crossed a line. Erik was more than willing to kill the men he was holding prisoner. That much is…well. He already knew…. But Erik would have killed Raven, Charles thinks, if it had come to that. And any—non-mutants?—who might have been in the way…

What exactly is the scope of Erik’s plans? Charles still doesn’t know. But it’s too far. He’s planning death, more death, that much was so very obvious in the way he said it, ‘killing is what works’, and…well. He can’t let Erik do that. He has to stop him. And to do that, he has to get out of here.

Charles watches the sun sink into the ocean off the west coast of Peru, and runs the callus of his hands lightly over the wheels of his chair. He’s going to get out of here again. And this time, he’s going to be ready to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. They always end up set against each other eventually. Where will they end up over time? Well, we'll see... ;D
> 
> Lots and lots of thanks to fairlyironic, Kyrene, ettu, Lini and Junky for comments last chapter <3 And thanks to everyone who's left comments or kudos over the course of this story, or even just read it! :) I hope you'll all join me for the next installment! First chapter shall be up in the next couple of days. Commenting people, as always, I'll reply when I update - everyone else, shall be posted within the same 'verse heading :)
> 
> Hope everyone had a merry xmas, whether or not you celebrate it <3


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